


A Comprehensive Guide to Dragon-Spotting

by LullabyKnell



Series: 'Til This Moment [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Companion Piece, Dragons, Gen, Mythical Beings & Creatures, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Self-Indulgent, YatPtmD, dragon!Darcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-04-21 14:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Specifically, a guide to dragon!Darcy spotting. </p><p>A collection of scenes from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786?view_full_work=true">You are the Princess to my Dragon</a> from the POV of characters that aren't Darcy. Created as a warm-up exercise for when I need to get my marvelous draconian muse back from wherever it flies off to. </p><p>First chapter is a table of contents with links.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Table of Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You are the Princess to my Dragon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786) by [LullabyKnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell). 



> This will get entirely out of hand, I know it.
> 
> You may consider this canon or not to the YatPtmD universe as you see fit.
> 
> Obviously contains spoilers for the story.

  1. Table of Contents
  2. [Ch4 - Jane Foster - Darcy Reveals She's a Dragon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4832621/chapters/11303038) \- 8.3k words  
  
_Look, the fact of the matter is is that Jane should not be held responsible for the things she's done that are because of Darcy. She's fully responsible for enough stupid stunts and horribly embarrassing accidents without also being held responsible for her actions that are actually mostly-if-not-entirely Darcy's fault._
  3. [Ch13 - Maria Hill - Darcy's Arrival on the Helicarrier](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4832621/chapters/11068409) \- 3.1k words  
  
_She is the Deputy Director of SHIELD, goddamnit, and she will not lose her cool even if her job basically now consists of gods, dragons, superheroes, and the end of the goddamn world._  

  4. [Ch20 - Steve Rogers - A Warm Light for All Mankind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4832621/chapters/13200982) \- 7.8k words  
  
_It's not, Steve will admit, his best interrupting statement coming into a room, but it's not his worst either. It's by far the most uncomfortable one he's made, though, because he'd said it on a familiar instinct that was ruined the second he remembered that he was seventy years out of time, a world out of place, and that no one, much less a friend, stood at his back._  
  

  5. [Ch26 - Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers - Avenge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4832621/chapters/14437783) \- 6.2k words  
  
 _Seated around, Rogers, Stark, and Natasha watch in absolute silence. They don't look much like superheroes here – too grim, too still, and too carefully ignoring how many empty chairs there are and how much they, these remaining few, are still not the team they were supposed to be._
  6. ...?



 

 


	2. Ch4 - Jane Foster - Darcy Reveals She's a Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jane Foster meets Bingley Lewis, learns the truth, and a whole lot of things make so much more sense in hindsight (and also become dramatic irony). 
> 
> Alternate POV of YatPtmD Chapter 4: [Just Another Day in Beautiful Puente Antiguo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/8688487)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jane's character is a little difficult for me, similar to Steve, because I personally find their thought processes, motivations, and priorities tricky to grasp. There's somehow a simultaneous quality of black-and-white _and_ infinite-shades-of-grey to their characters for me. Nevertheless, I persevered, and this is the result. 
> 
> Written between Ch24 and 25 of YatPtmD.  
> Posted 2015-10-03.
> 
> Approx 8.3k words.

Look, the fact of the matter is is that Jane should not be held responsible for the things she's done that are because of Darcy. She's fully responsible for enough stupid stunts and horribly embarrassing accidents without also being held responsible for her actions that are actually mostly-if-not-entirely Darcy's fault.

Crashing into Thor? Actually Darcy's fault. So what if the anomaly they'd been chasing had been precipitated, as had been _previously observed,_ by an enormous storm with extremely high winds and a lot of lightning? They'd been perfectly fine where they were and there had been absolutely no need (except there probably actually had been) for Darcy to grab the wheel and try and turn them around in some strange attempt to 'save their lives'. It'd been Jane grappling with Darcy for the wheel that had distracted her, making it too late to brake or swerve around the guy that had suddenly appeared in their path in the middle of the desert.

A fact that Darcy conveniently liked to leave _out_ of the story of 'How Jane met Thor'.

And Thor had actually been perfectly fine after being hit by a van. Jane had not 'knocked his brains loose' (as Darcy had put it), he'd just been... somewhat distraught after being banished (not that they'd known he was an alien at the time), which was absolutely nothing to give up on extremely valuable soil samples and light meter readings for. They'd only had to go to the hospital after Darcy had (admittedly pretty sensibly) tased him.

It was Darcy who'd given the admissions nurse at the hospital the impression that Jane and Thor had some sort of romantic relationship, not Jane. (Although that had been pretty useful later for when Jane needed to use that misconception to lie to the nurse about Thor being her estranged husband to get in to see him and interrogate him on the wormhole. In hindsight, Jane was glad Thor had been missing and that that lie had died quietly.)

And Jane had only been distracted enough to hit Thor with the van _again_ because, upon being told that they were going to hunt Thor down, Darcy had pulled a taser and a can of mace that Jane had never seen before from her purse. Which had made Jane seriously wonder exactly how armed her intern was and if all of it was legal. (The full answer to which, she would have been very, _very_ surprised by.) 

Anyway, the list goes on and on, really.

So Jane Foster cannot be held (solely) responsible in matters which also involve Darcy Lewis, and the same can likely be said vice versa, because it is, whatever it is (good or bad), without a doubt, at least a little bit the other's fault too. Always. The graphs don't lie.

Nor can Jane be held fully responsible for much of anything before she's had morning coffee, because that's just not fair.

Thus, it is not Jane's fault that she screamed like she hadn't since she was twelve and dropped her barely sipped mug of coffee when she walked into their shared living space and discovered a ridiculously tall stranger looking through their fridge. As much as Darcy was openly appreciative of people's admirable assets (pun intended), never once had the other woman actually brought anyone over. Jane had been under the sincere belief that she'd put finding strange men in her home in the morning thanks to her roommate behind her after her undergraduate years.

The stranger startled, whipping around with a wide-eyed expression, and Jane was suddenly struck by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. The man was young, probably around Darcy's age, with the same wavy dark-brown hair that Darcy had and a very similar face. Jane's coffee-less brain then spotted the Culver University logo on the front of his hoodie and attempted to do the extremely obvious math.

But before Jane's brain could slog to any sort of confusion, or Jane could say anything at all to this stranger who was a little too familiar, its process was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps and then by their owner: Darcy.

Jane's intern bursts into the room, glasses missing and hair wild, the folds of her pillow imprinted onto her face, wielding the same taser that she'd used to take down Thor in front of her like a gun, shouting, “Nobody move! I will have taser and _I will use it!_ ”

Not a bluff for Darcy Lewis: Jane's knight in a bra and penguin-patterned pajama pants.

But then Darcy blinks hazily at the intruder and says, a little uncertainly, “...Bingley?”

The intruder, Bingley, closes the fridge, turns around completely, stands to his full height, and sticks his spotted chin out defiantly. As though denying some sort of accusation that Jane, running over her hazy memory to make sure, definitely hadn't heard.

Darcy puts her taser on the kitchen table by her laptop, and uses her free hand to pinch the bridge of her nose as she squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh god,” she says, before sighing and glaring fiercely at the intruder, who only sticks his chin out further. “You're cleaning up the coffee cup you made Jane drop. I told you, when I'm staying with other people, you have to knock before you break in.”

The intruder, Bingley, only huffs disdainfully at this statement.

Unwilling to not know what's going on any longer, especially in her own home, Jane steps forward and – as nicely as she could manage just having lost her morning coffee; Darcy's fault, unsurprising at this point – demands, “Darcy, what's going on?”

Darcy switches her glare off and turns to Jane, looking more than a little guilty. “Yeah... so... Jane -” She gestures towards Jane. “- this is my brother, Bingley.” Darcy gestures towards the intruder, then glares at him and says, “Bingley, this -” She gestures at Jane again. “- is my Jane. Play _nice._ ”

 _My Jane?_ Jane wonders, then her coffee-less brain manages to reboot itself into semi-working order.

Bingley... Bingley Lewis.

Darcy's mentioned her brother more than a few times since they've met – many more times than a few times, actually. Bingley Lewis is Darcy's only surviving family, Jane remembers, and is (according to Darcy) 'a complete nerd-lizard' (whatever that meant). He's the same age as Darcy; he attends Culver University; he's anti-social and awkward and Jane only knows this because she's vaguely acquainted with him by Darcy's stories that gleefully begin with, 'Yo, Janie, you'll never believe what my brother did now.'

“How do you do,” the brother in question says, in a pleasant voice that manages to have no actual pleasantness in it, holding himself stiffly and not actually looking at her.

That's... charming.

Jane looks over at Darcy, eyebrows raised, trying to convey how much she doesn't want to deal with this in her morning. Because, although Jane would probably assent to Darcy's brother visiting (after a brief rant about them being here to work, not be a vacation destination for friends and family), she would have liked a little warning and now she's lost her coffee. She is without coffee and that is an abomination against science (how, Jane does not know, but she'll figure it out later) and completely unacceptable and Darcy better have a good explanation for this.

But Darcy only has a hand to her own forehead and is muttering, “Oh my g- I knew there was something I forgot to do this decade. We are so doing a manners update later.”

' _This decade'?_ Jane's brain files away into the 'Darcy Lewis' category in her head. Jane doesn't react to how odd that mental note is because the category is filled with things that make no sense whatsoever, just like its namesake, and aren't really worth the headache of puzzling out.

Instead, Jane looks back at the intruder in her home, Darcy's brother, Bingley Lewis, and says in greeting, “Hey.” Because that's what they're waiting for right? A response? Jane's tolerance for other human beings and aptitude at social activities, according to Darcy and Erik, is worse than her usual terrible before morning coffee.

Luckily, Darcy picks up Jane's (and Bingley Lewis' too, Jane would bet) conversational slack to get the ball rolling.

“So, Bing,” she says, “not that it's not great to see you, but _what are you doing here?”_

Darcy is almost growling by the end of her demanded question, but Bingley is not (visibly) intimidated, he only raises his chin even further. Any further and he'll be looking so far down his nose at his sister that he'll be staring at the ceiling; further than that and he'll be ready to do the limbo.

“There were Asgardians here,” he replies firmly, as though this should (somehow) be obvious, “I couldn't not investigate.”

“...Asgardians,” Jane finds herself repeating automatically while her coffee-less brain has a complete and utter meltdown. Her head just stopped working to basically blare alarm sirens: ' _Oh god, Darcy tweeted the entire incident and now SHIELD is going to lock us up in Area 51 and throw away the key'_.

And then Jane realized that that wasn't how people ought to react to aliens with a history in Norse Mythology. Bingley Lewis had said 'Asgardians', familiar and comfortable, and implied quite clearly that his sister really should expect him to come investigating when Asgardians were about. He'd said it with the tone and posture of someone who'd thought they'd put this discussion behind them a long time ago.

Darcy didn't seem to find anything strange about this (which was strange in itself; another mental note), and simply demands, arms crossed and foot starting to tap every few seconds, “What about school?”

“I got bored of it,” Bingley Lewis replies with a shrug. “I don't want to study human poetry anymore. It's dull.”

“Human poetry,” Jane repeats, while her brain gave another try to attempting to process impossible things at an early hour without coffee.

It wasn't working well.

Jane stares forlornly at her broken mug and spilled coffee.

Bingley Lewis said 'humans' the same way that Thor and the Warriors Three said 'mortals', and Jane couldn't actually decide whether she wanted her brain to manage to process this idea. She mostly just wanted to have a coffee and go back to bed, then crawl back out and have her work and life in order with sensible explanations attached.

This was Darcy's fault somehow, Jane knew at the least, even though it wasn't quite clear what exactly it was that was Darcy's fault.

“So... you just hopped on a plane and flew down?” Darcy prompts her brother, eyes narrowed and lips pursed in the picture of 'unimpressed'.

Her foot starts to tap slightly faster than before, and Bingley Lewis, who had to be (a ridiculous and offensive height of) 6 foot 3 at the least, eyed his sister's bare toes with an expression Jane would have applied to people facing down feral and starving carnivores. Bingley Lewis' complexion turns slightly green, and it takes a few seconds before he manages to muster up an answer.

“Yes,” he says, unconvincingly, his eyes focused on his sister's foot like it might attack at any moment.

Darcy's foot stopped tapping and Bingley relaxed, then looked up at the expression on his sister's face and flinched. Jane started to wonder if they might have to be driving Bingley Lewis to the hospital soon, because Darcy's fingers were twitching and her (possibly illegal) taser was in easy reach. (At least Darcy wouldn't manage to somehow imply that Jane was romantically involved with Bingley probably... hopefully.)

“Oh my god, Bing, you didn't even take a plane, did you?”

Bingley Lewis sticks out his chin again, as though he doesn't have anything to be ashamed of and whatever Darcy is accusing him of is entirely anyone's but his own fault.

“Those things make me airsick,” he says in explanation, with a nod to punctuate, to him, what is the obvious end to this discussion. (Of course, blame the airplanes – simple.)

Jane's brain finally gives up, probably having used up all her memory to try and process whatever the hell is going on here. Since she wants some answers as to why Darcy's brother is in her home to investigate Asgardians - having taken her coffee and peace of mind from her along the way - but her curiosity isn't going to solve itself, Jane whirls on the person to blame. Because, good or bad, it's always at least a little bit Darcy's fault, whether it be who did the dirty dishes or who hit an alien with the van.

“Darcy,” Jane says, as calmly and seriously as she can, doing her best to ignore the way Darcy obviously winces at what the other woman knows is coming. “What's going on?”

“Um,” Darcy says, looking around the room as though the answer might be written on the wall. (It's not; Jane checked. Twice.)

Bingley Lewis meets his sister's searching look with an unhelpful raised eyebrow.

“How does he know about Asgard?” Jane prompts, jabbing a figure at Bingley, who doesn't flinch but frowns and leans backwards slightly as though Jane might have been about to touch him somehow from halfway across the room.

Darcy watches him do this, biting her bottom lip, then looks back at Jane and opens her mouth.

Then shuts it.

Bingley Lewis sighs, beleaguered, and says, “I study old books.” He says this in the tone that suggested this should have been obvious and he'd thought they'd covered this, punctuating it with the same little nod that proclaimed that was _clearly_ that.

Jane cannot quite communicate how much that isn't an acceptable explanation purely by expression to this stranger who made her drop her morning coffee, but she tries. She tries very hard, because she does not need this after what her life has been recently. Her work on the Bifrost is too confusing to have to deal with confusing and vague nonsense in the rest of her life too.

“You study old books,” Jane repeats, loudly and sarcastically, looking at Darcy very pointedly to convey how much she'd better have coffee and/or (preferably _and_ ) a really good explanation in the next ten seconds.

But Darcy is staring at her brother again, disbelieving and with no small amount of regret, and muttering, “Points for effort. Negative points for application.”

Bingley Lewis scowls back at his sister. “You should tell her,” he says.

Darcy blinks. “What?”

Jane takes a step forward, trying to catch Darcy's eyes. She wants explanations for this and she's not letting go until she has them, not after a display like this.

“Tell me _what_?” Jane demands, ready to reiterate the demand as many times as she needs to.

But Bingley Lewis interrupts her by saying in a very different voice, not unlike an audio-book narrator, “Lasting and stable relationships are built on clear communication and demonstrations of trust.” Then he changes pitch slightly, although not the tone of narration, and continues, “Having insight into another individual's opinions and mind without their knowledge or consent is a breach of trust and respect.”

Jane blinks at him for some seconds, then looks at Darcy, who is staring at him in disbelief.

“...Did you read that in a book?” Darcy demands of her brother after another second.

“Yes,” he answers, back in his regular voice, rolling his eyes.

He looks so much like Darcy in that moment that Jane manages to shake the strangeness of his quotation out of her mind; she looks at her intern again.

“Darcy, tell me what?” Jane asks, with all the tiredness of her terrible sleep, lack of coffee, and extreme brain-pain at trying to figure out what the hell is going on. All she wants is clean explanations, possibly with sticky-note comments and a well-organized index, as to what's being done to her life if she's not allowed to have any sort of control over it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane sees Bingley Lewis also looking at his sister. “Is her trust repaid or not?” he asks, flat and serious.

Darcy looks between them both, pursing and biting her lips as she thinks for a moment. Then she sighs and shrugs her shoulders, saying, “Ugh, fine.” Then she looks her brother up and down, hands on her hips, a smile working its way onto her face. “Lookit you getting all smart about social relationships.”

Bingley stares back at her disdainfully, making a noise somewhere between a huff and a grunt.

“I'll do it,” Darcy says, like that had been some sort of argument that needed to be refuted. “But not here. The creeper agents probably have this place bugged to hell and back, they're already watching us like 24/7. We're not talking about this stuff here.”

Jane is left throughout those sentences to wonder what kind of secret exactly her Poli Sci intern has that she doesn't want SHIELD to know. Darcy is one of the best people knows about keeping secrets, but also an incorrigible gossip and an open book about most things. She blurts things out most of the time, and isn't shy about sharing her opinions about anything from mutant-rights legislation (some of which Jane hadn't even heard about until Darcy starts ranting about it) to how amazingly, _amazingly_ nice Thor's shoulders and abs are (which Jane had worked out for herself).

(They're pretty amazing, Jane will admit.)

It's also amazing just thinking about the fact that Darcy has some massive secret that she believes she's managed to keep from SHIELD until this point. SHIELD gave the impression of knowing everything about everything, even when they obviously didn't – something that had annoyed Jane a lot.

Wait... SHIELD is watching them? Right now? It's very, very likely and makes sense if so, but how in the world does _Darcy_ know that?

“I'll take care of it,” Bingley Lewis says, end-of-discussion-like, closing his eyes.

Jane and Darcy both look at him.

Darcy frowns. “What?”

Then Jane sees Darcy's eyes go wide as Bingley Lewis takes a deep breath in, then breathes out and the air around him _starts to shimmer_. Darcy lunges forward, shouting; Bingley's eyes snap open with a bright and unnatural glint; and Jane takes a reflexive step backwards thinking: ' _Oh god, oh god, ohgodohgod. I don't want this; justletmehavemycoffeeandstopthisshit.'_

“OH MY GOD, BINGLEY, DON'T-!”

A pulse bursts through the room with a wave of air, uncomfortably hot and prickling against Jane's face. It makes the lights flare for a split-second before they explode in showers of sparks. Jane dives under the nearest desk (even if Darcy doesn't seem to believe it, Jane has _some_ survival instinct in her), sneezing again and again as glass shards hit the ground and various appliances beep and buzz wildly before dying with a static sizzle.

 

~

 

It feels like longer, but it's only a few seconds later that Jane pulls her head from her knees and looks out from under the desk she'd taken cover under. Their living space looks like another place entirely – there's broken glass over most surfaces; several appliances are smoking; and the smoke-detector isn't going insane because it's smoking itself, dangling from a wire – now lit only by the dim natural light coming through the windows.

In the middle of it all, Bingley Lewis is staring around with an expression somewhere between smugness and fascination, eyes faintly golden, and Darcy is whimpering over her laptop, which is very likely now deceased. They would be mourning it, Jane assumed, in a mass funeral that included the coffee-maker, the toaster, and the old radio that had been permanently stuck on country stations (and would not be missed).

After a brief moment, in which the toaster sparked again and fell over on its side like an animal dying of thirst in the desert, Darcy whirled on her baby's murderer with an expression that could not have been described without using some concept of vengeance. Bingley Lewis, the killer in question, made an expression of pure terror. Both of them looked extremely dramatic in the changed lighting.

“BINGLEY, YOU DUMB LIZARD, YOU BLEW OUT _EVERYTHING_!” Darcy shouts, hands waving about wildly like she can't decide whether to strangle him or to swat away the invisible army of bees apparently attacking her. “LIKE THAT'S NOT IN THE LEAST BIT SUSPICIOUS! I CAN'T _BELIEVE_ YOU!”

“I'm... sorry?” Bingley Lewis offers awkwardly. Not with actual regret, but more like it was a sentence someone had told he ought to say after wrecking someone's kitchen.

(Jane has exactly one guess who.)

Darcy ignores the empty words and turns back to her deceased laptop, cooing at it pitifully and holding her hands back from touching it like it was an open wound. Then she gives a sad sniff and runs her hands over the surface lightly, stroking the smoking thing with an amount of care Jane's seen mostly reserved for... well, that laptop.

“It'll be okay, baby,” Darcy assures the inanimate object. “We're gonna fix you up and keep you away from Bingley, I promise. It's gonna be okay.”

Bingley, witnessed laptop-murderer, simply looks at his sister with an expression that goes from scandalized to concerned (for Darcy's mental health, no doubt; Jane recognizes that feeling) to unmistakable and unadulterated fondness. Then back to concern again, which Jane thinks she should also be feeling, but can't really comment on because she's done appallingly similar things to some of her instruments and may or may not (Erik's word is not proof by the way) have pledged undying love to some of the faculty's nicer machines at Culver.

But enough is enough.

Jane will not not know what is going on any longer! She will have answers! Explanations as to what secrets Darcy (of all people!) is keeping from her (Jane doesn't know whether she's more surprised, hurt, or confused), how in the world Bingley Lewis destroyed what looks to be every single electrical appliance in the room with a breath, and generally what the ever-loving hell is happening.

 _There needs to be a limit on how strange life can get,_ Jane thinks decidedly to herself as she crawls out from under the desk, hands trembling only slightly. Shaken and surprised out of all remaining sleepiness, Jane manages to pull herself to her feet and stay upright somehow. _There really, really, really, REALLY needs to limit on these things._

Jane looks around the room one more time for good measure, from the dangling smoke alarm to the tipped-over toaster, feeling more and more like the world and everything that makes actual sense is slipping away beneath her feet. She stares at the Lewis siblings, helplessly bewildered, and finds herself more than a little bit angry at Darcy trying to act casual with a guilty expression and Bingley's disdainfully pitying regard.

“What did he just _do?”_ Jane demands of them both, trying to clamp down on the hysteria rising in her chest and the indignity of facing even _more_ things that she can't (even with all her degrees and logic and reason) make sense of. “That was... that was...” How to even describe it? What was it? How did it happen? How did something like that even come from a human being?

“Just there was this pulse,” Jane attempts to describe, “and then the lights flared...” She has to give up because she _will not_ call it magic. (Science-not-yet-understood is the best she'll manage.) “What _was_ that? Darcy, what's going on?” She finishes on a far more shrill note than she'd like, but she'd like to see anyone else do better with _their_ coffee seeping over the glass-littered floor.

Darcy stills – if that's not some kind of tell, Jane doesn't know what is – and Jane feels a bit like throwing up. Because first Erik had left under vague details with SHIELD and a vague promise to keep in contact that he'd barely kept, and now it turned about that Darcy was... was... Darcy was _keeping secrets._ Big secrets.

...Does no one tell Jane anything?

With a final absentminded pat to her deceased laptop, Darcy straightens like she's marching off to fight a war, and turns towards Jane. Her expression, to try and explain it, is almost a non-expression. Except that it's a little bit considering, a little pale in a greenish sort of way, and looks very much like it's trying too hard to stay where it is and not flee from whatever actual expression is trying to make it onto Darcy's face.

Jane waits... for the truth... for an explanation... for her friend that maybe might not be.

“So, I'm a dragon,” Darcy says bluntly.

Jane waits, then realizes that, no, that wasn't a hallucination, Darcy actually said that. She thinks she might actually be able to hear the extended wail of anguish coming from her coffee-less brain right now because that statement doesn't compute.

If Darcy is fucking with her on this, Jane swears to, well, something.

“Bingley, here, is also a dragon,” Darcy continues, completely oblivious of Jane's mental meltdown inside, gesturing towards her brother as though actual sensible words are coming out of her mouth instead of complete and utter gibberish.

Bingley Lewis waves at Jane under his sister's stare, looking incredibly put-upon about it.

Darcy uses her free hand, the one not pointing at her brother who is apparently a dragon, to gesture at herself, who is also apparently a dragon. “We're human-shaped right now to attend university, but are actually giant scaly beasts who are over a thousand years old.”

Jane, vaguely aware that her eyes have gotten increasingly wider over the course of these statements, very seriously considers the idea that she might still be sleeping and this whole thing is actually a dream. It feels like a dream; it's got that hazy quality to it where everything looks real except nothing makes sense and it's actually all very unreal.

It's not that much of a stretch to think that this is Jane's brain attempting to formulate information in space before she wakes up. Obviously her dreaming brain has taken Darcy and Darcy's obsession with dragons and created some simulated reality where Darcy is claiming that she is a dragon. The brother showing up is a bit strange, since Jane has never encountered anything about Bingley Lewis except what Darcy's told her about him, but this is still obviously not really happening.

“Bingley just blew out the electronics with magic,” Darcy goes on. “I think just it was a burst of the really scratchy, interfering kind.” She looks to her brother, who nods in bored confirmation. “It does not mix well with tech at all, so... bam, I guess.”

 _Bam!_ Jane's brain repeats, with a worryingly hysterical giggle.

Darcy shrugs. “It's probably for the best that we haven't really set anything back up yet,” she says, looking at the mess that used to be their living space, before looking straight at Jane with another almost non-expression. Partly greenish, partly worried, and partly urgent.

Jane stares back, slowly registering that this is neither a dream nor a hallucination. She can feel the faint itch of unbrushed bedhead hair; she can feel the comforting fuzz of her slippers between her toes; she can feel the pull and brush of fabric as she breathes as well as she can. Her eyes have adjusted to the dimmed light; she can smell the coffee puddle on the floor; and everything is far too calm and stable to be a dream. Jane's dreams have always been far more incoherent than this.

And... well... this dream might actually make more sense than Jane would like to admit.

 

~

 

“JANE, HAVE YOU SEEN THE OVEN MITTS?” Darcy called from (presumably) the kitchen.

Jane tore herself away from (glaring at) her laptop screen, pausing the uncooperative simulation that was going to drive her insane or make her blind if she had to stare at it any longer. It really shouldn't be too much to ask that the planets metaphorically align in her favor so that these programs would actually work for once.

Virtual space, Jane firmly believed, should be like actual space: free of bugs.

“JANE! HAVE YOU SEEN THE OVEN MITTS?!”

Jane stopped squinting at the screen to shout back, “DARCY, WHEN WOULD I HAVE _EVER_ USED THE OVEN MITTS?” Because Jane and cooking get along like a house on fire, literally, it's highly unlikely that Jane would know where anything in the kitchen is besides the coffee and the appliances in plain sight like the coffee machine and the toaster.

“I'M NOT ASKING IF YOU'VE USED THEM; I'M ASKING IF YOU'VE _SEEN_ THEM. AND YOU _TOO_ HAVE USED THEM.”

“NO, I HA-”

“YOU USED THEM TO KEEP YOUR HANDS CLEAN FIXING YOUR METER THING.”

Jane paused, because she had no idea what the hell Darcy meant by 'meter thing' and had no actual memory of using the oven mitts to clean any of her equipment, but that sounded like something she would do. Plus, Darcy was undeniably the best at keeping track of objects, like who's using them or where they might be. (Her competition is pretty weak, though.)

“WELL, I DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE,” Jane called back. “HAVE YOU ASKED ERIK?”

“ERIK WENT OUT TO MEET UP WITH SOME OF HIS BAR BUDDIES. ARE YOU COMPLETELY CERTAIN YOU DON'T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA WHERE THEY MIGHT BE? THE TINY ITTIEST B-”

Jane's eye twitched in involuntary annoyance. “I ALREADY SAID THAT I DON'T KNOW.”

“SERIOUSLY? BECAUSE THESE ARE SERIOUSLY GOING TO BURN IF THEY STAY IN ANY LONGER. Fucking hell, I'm putting our kitchen shit on chains, I swear.”

That was a pretty good idea, Jane had to admit. Their kitchenware tended to disappear and reappear in odd places, put to functions that they were neither intended nor really suitable for. Jane was terribly guilty of this, she knew, and would try to use duct-tape and a spatula to replace an antenna without much thought if the situation came up. (Which it had. Twice.)

Darcy's angry muttering continued for the next couple of minutes, interspersed with the frantic beeping of their oven and the clanging of pots and pans. Jane tuned out Darcy's hunt for their oven mitts and went back to studying the simulation in front of her, bringing up the code to try and determine what it was that kept making things squish into shapes way too small for them. Is it too much to ask that things behave logically? No, it really shouldn't be.

After another minute, Jane reached for her phone to text Erik about this, bar buddies or not, only to realize that she'd left it in their main living space. With a (way too dramatic) sigh and some (bitter) mumbling about code that didn't work, Jane got to her feet and went to retrieve it from the next room.

Jane walked into the kitchen, thinking about what it was that could be wrong (and muttering about it), stepped past Darcy holding the hot tray of baked goods, went into the dining table, grabbed her phone, turned around to go back to the frustrating program, and stopped when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye.

A tray of cookies, freshly baked and browned around the edges, sat on the stove now, with a faint rise of steam coming from them.

“Oh,” Jane said, somewhat automatically, “You found them.”

Darcy, who was standing very still next to the still-cooling oven, without any oven mitts in sight, looked back at her and said:

“...Yes.”

Something in the back of Jane's brain objected to something here, fixated on something out of place, although it didn't seem to know what was the matter here. It was obvious, her brain knew, but it was simultaneously occupied with matters of much greater importance (i.e. Space) and it had never been good at the more mundane aspects of everyday life.

It probably wasn't that important.

“Oh, okay,” Jane said, and walked out of the room to back to her work, texting Erik about uncooperative software.

 

~

 

“Careful, those dumplings are hot,” Erik warned Darcy as she lit up at the sight of take-out.

Unfortunately, the warning fell on deaf ears, and, between the beginning and end of it, Darcy had snatched one and popped the steaming dough ball into her mouth. From across the room, Jane looked up from her laptop and watched Erik watch Darcy as he waited for the resident intern to register the temperature get her tongue scalded.

Instead, what happened was:

“I am the blood of the dragon,” Darcy announced with a haughty scoff, cheek stuffed and chest puffed out, upon which her t-shirt depicted said beast in red and black with three heads. “Fire cannot kill a dragon.”

Erik stared at her.

“Right,” he said, eyeing the steaming dumplings with vague suspicion and possibly even betrayal as Darcy reached for a second one.

 

~

 

“Hi, I'd like to order a pizza for pick-up” Jane said, wishing that Darcy hadn't decided to choose now to change their flat tire and could make the take-out calls like was her job.

Well, not actually her job, but it would be a lie to say that a decent fraction of Darcy's internship was not the procurement of food. For someone who was undeniably and surprisingly intelligent and intuitive, and who was doing a _science_ internship, Darcy seemed to go to extraordinary lengths to do anything but science beyond basic legwork. Jane had fought in the beginning, but it was hard to resist the will of someone who was handing you a warm pizza with your favorite toppings. (Almost impossible, really.)

Jane still couldn't decide how much of Darcy's “I don't know, the flashing box thingy with the lights” was actually real. How anyone doing a minor in computer sciences and information technology could supposedly be that clueless was a question that made the brain hurt.

Similar in a way to how the person on the other end of the line's next words made the brain hurt.

“ _Uh... hold please.”_

_Click._

Jane stopped scribbling down the list of things she needed to pick up from the hardware store.

“What?” she said.

The person on the other end of the line didn't answer.

Jane pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it, then put it back to her ear and said, more than a little bit incredulously, “...Hello?”

No answer.

Jane made to hang up the phone, feeling confused as to how she'd somehow gotten ordering pizza wrong and also righteously assured that Darcy should have been the one making the call. Jane had multiple degrees, these sorts of things weren't suppose to happen to her anymore, and yet, since Darcy's arrival, there had been a marked increase of similar incidents.

It had to be Darcy's fault somehow.

Before Jane could hang up the phone, however, a voice clicked back onto it.

“ _Hello?”_ it said.

“...Hello,” Jane replied warily, instead of hanging up the phone to go make Darcy do this like she'd just been about to.

Either her or Erik, who seemed to have somewhat escaped the Darcy Lewis Effect.

“ _Uh, hi,”_ the new voice said, before they cleared their throat and got down to business. _“This is the manager speaking. Someone from this number made a pick-up order for Thursday and I'd just like to confirm that there wasn't a mistake made.”_

“...Okay?”

Another clearing of the throat. _“Did someone from this address order thirty pizzas?”_

“...Uh, what?”

“ _Thirty pizzas. According to our computer, someone from your number ordered thirty pizzas for pick-up on Thursday,”_ the voice said, calm but baffled. _“I'd just like assurance that it wasn't some sort of prank call and that the numbers are right; the employee who took the call was new. So, is the order right? Yes? No? ...Hello?”_

Jane thought about it for a moment. “Um... I think the phone number you have must be wrong,” she said after she got over trying to picture a tower of _thirty_ pizzas. “No one at this address would order thirty pizzas.”

“ _Oh.”_

“Yeah,” Jane replied, then asked, “Can I order a pizza for pick-up now, please?”

“ _...Yes, yes, of course, ma'am. Go right ahead.”_

Later, Jane would walk into the garage where Darcy was putting a wheel back on their van and tell Darcy what had happened. (So focused on the strangeness of the phone call, Jane didn't notice when Darcy somehow got the heavy tire back onto the van when Jane wasn't looking for a few seconds.)

“Who orders thirty pizzas?” Jane asked, just as confused as the voice on the phone had sounded.

“Someone hungry enough to eat a horse but who's learned that people lose their shit when farm animals randomly go missing?” Darcy suggested.

Jane laughed at the frankly-stated ridiculousness. “What?”

Darcy shrugged, smiling. “Or, you know, someone throwing a party or something. Pass the ratchet?”

 

~

 

The car came out of nowhere in a show of flashing lights and pumping sound that was probably meant to be music, cutting in front of their van, forcing Darcy to swerve slightly and Jane to grab the dashboard tightly and the both of them to scream very, very loudly. It was probably for the best that Erik had come down with a small cold and elected to stay home, for the sake of his ears if not his general health.

“HEY!” Darcy shouted out her open window, as the vehicle in front of them seemed to tauntingly wriggle its spoiler (which looked like belonged in an IKEA, not on the back of a car), with an inflection and tone that Jane had never heard before on her. “I'M DRIVIN' HERE!”

Jane was busy clinging to the dashboard for her life (and also trying to contain the urge to track down this asshole and slash their tires and key their stupid neon flames paint-job; she'd promised Erik she wouldn't do things like that anymore), but she still managed to spot what was probably someone trying to flash the middle finger out of a window that their disaster on wheels didn't really have.

“I WILL ROAST YOU LIKE THE PIG YOU ARE, YOU TRICKED-OUT GARISH PIECE OF CRAP!” Darcy shouted, just in time for flames to somehow spout out of the back of the tasteless vehicle as the driver sped away in a screech of tires and bass. “OH. OH, YOU WANNA SEE _FIRE_?”

“DARCY!”

“What? Oh, I'm not actually gonna do anything. Our van couldn't take my Road Warrior rage.”

“Good,” Jane said, taking a deep breath and releasing the dashboard.

“We're gonna chase him down and slash his tires, though, right?”

Jane sighed.

 

~

 

Sometimes Jane thought that Darcy had a list of movies that involved dragons and fantasy from best to worst, and was going down the list waiting for the point that Jane or Erik cried foul. The review ratings were ticking down film by film, and it was progression just slow enough that Jane thought she might not notice when they became truly terrible.

Darcy didn't seem to notice the decreasing quality much, which was why Jane suspected a joke. No one could love dragons that much, except that Darcy apparently did. And was clever enough to make their movie nights a slow descent into fantasy hell for Jane and Erik (who had fallen asleep twenty minutes into the movie), which Darcy would probably try to deny, as she usually did when people accused her of not being as shallow as a mirror.

Darcy caught Jane staring at her and just raised her eyebrows, eyes bright beneath glasses that Jane knew she didn't need, smiling faintly.

“What?” Darcy asked.

“I don't get you,” Jane said bluntly.

Darcy's small smile turned into a full-blown grin, then she laughed and reached over to pat Jane on the arm. It was touch that should have annoyed the hell out of Jane, who couldn't and wouldn't stand for being condescended to or coddled, but felt unusually warm and friendly instead.

“I am a vastly misunderstood beast,” Darcy said.

Jane narrowed her eyes. “You're quoting something again, aren't you?”

Darcy's grin got a little wider. “Maybe.”

 

~

 

“Dragons?” Jane asks, focusing on Darcy, who somehow feels like an immovable rock in a whirling world despite either being a dragon or crazy.

It shouldn't be like that, Jane is sure. Jane should probably be screaming right now, or fainting dead away, or something along those lines, but she's not. Oh, her head is a whirl of emotions and feelings and other things that Jane doesn't actually know what to do with – disbelief and betrayal and fear and anger and confusion – but through all that, Darcy is standing there looking steady like stone but nervous as hell.

She meets Jane's eyes with wariness, biting her lip and fingers twitching in a way that Jane thinks has to be unconscious, but with an unwavering quality that Jane's curious and digging nature using has to pry out of Darcy with a metaphorical crowbar. And next to her, Bingley Lewis is looking back and forth between the two of them. He too meets Jane's eyes steadily, with that same calm assuredness in his posture and certainty in his place in the world that Thor had. (A confidence, Jane feels dimly, that no one wearing a hoodie and pajama pants should ever have. She saw that power in her graduate years, and it's a fearful thing.)

Darcy nods, face as sober as she can manage, which isn't much. “Yup,” she says.

“Oh,” Jane answers, feeling her brain meltdown give way into a cool calmness that's probably shock and a unwitting curiousness start to trickle up. Dragons. “Alright then.”

Because her legs are probably going to give out if she stays standing any longer, Jane walks over to the nearest chair and lets herself collapse into it. It's not comfortable; it's a little too heavy and fast to be entirely painless; but it's a relief. Dragons. Of course. How did she not see it before and, also, why have her knees suddenly decided to stop working? Dragons, of course.

The movies and the merchandise, the antiques and the t-shirts, the blogging and the books, the quips and the quotes... they all make a nauseating sort of sense now. The hints of an underlying, possibly-unintentional joke that now seem like irony in hindsight, those especially make Jane want to stick her head in a hole. So she folds her arms over the tabletop, across from Darcy's dead laptop, and buries her face in her arms where dragons aren't intruding in her list of variables that by this point is more science-we-don't-understand (a.k.a. “magic”) than science.

Dragons. Of course.

“Dragons,” Jane says aloud, in a testing way, and decides that it doesn't sound any better out loud than it does in her head. She groans, because at this point, she's earned it. “My _liiiiife._ ”

There's a creak of someone settling into the chair across and then a warm hand patting Jane's itching bedhead. “Poor you,” Darcy says comfortingly, and a little bit apologetically, which mollifies Jane enormously, because this is definitely and unmistakably Darcy's fault.

“Poor me,” Jane agrees before she can help herself, nodding into her arms. “I go out to the middle of nowhere to gather data and somehow end up hitting an alien with a car, getting ransacked by a government agency, and my intern best friend and her brother are _dragons._ _”_

And she can't even attempt to describe her life now without it sounding like the pilot of a science-fiction-fantasy television show. Which would be pretty cool, except no one's life should sound like the pilot to a television show. Jane can't even come up with a plausible combination of shows that would create what is now her life, which is really unfair, although now that she's thinking about it, she'd rather not make that comparison because the applicable tropes are terrifying.

She removes her head from her arms to glare at Darcy in the dim lighting, who meets her glare with an unfairly sunny grin. No one should have that kind of smile when they're squarely at fault here and they know it, and yet Darcy does, just like she always does.

“This stuff just didn't happen when I was a grad student. The most exciting thing that happened was me defending my thesis,” Jane points out unhappily, resigning herself to the fact that this idea is settling in her brain no matter what she does.

“Thus is the exciting life of a doctor,” Darcy tells her cheerily.

Jane groans, because cheeriness doesn't help the fact that nothing makes sense anymore and cinema tropes attach way too easily to her life.

“I'm a doctor, damn it, not a science-fiction character.”

“Star Trek,” Bingley Lewis says suddenly, reminding Jane of his existence and the fact that he's in the room. And how he is also the best argument that Darcy isn't just crazy, because Jane does not yet (emphasis on the __yet_ _ ) have a scientific explanation for glowing gold eyes and the ability to destroy rooms and electronics with a breath.

Darcy's brother blinks at them, then scowls, and now that Jane's brain has entered oddly-cool-almost-shock instead of terrified-confused-meltdown, it's... sort of cute. He looks so much like Darcy, except that he's pouting, and Darcy never pouts, she just badgers incessantly or asks for forgiveness rather than permission. Except that she usually doesn't bother asking for forgiveness at all. Thank god, Jane doesn't think she could handle Darcy pouting.

“That was a paraphrasing of a common line from Star Trek: The Original Series, yes?” he asks.

“Yes,” Darcy replies tiredly. “Yes, it was, Bing. Good catching that.”

Bingley Lewis looks pleased with himself, which makes Darcy frown and add, “You still have to clean up the coffee you made Jane drop.”

Jane glances at the spilled coffee on the floor, thinking distantly that it's probably cooled by now so even licking it off the floor wouldn't be even remotely worth it, which she immediately adds to Darcy's tab of things that are her fault. She's pretty sure that she wouldn't be feeling so numb and lost and confused right now if she'd managed to keep that coffee.

__Dragons watch Star Trek?_ _

“But I didn't drop it.”

Dragons apparently watch Star Trek.

“Yeah, but she wouldn't have dropped it if not for you.”

Well, there are worse things that dragons could be watching. Like Darcy's unending list of dragon and fantasy movies that were definitely feeling like dramatic irony in hindsight.

With a huff of indignation that Jane has heard Darcy make before when especially frustrated, which wasn't often but still happened, Bingley Lewis wanders off towards their kitchen while rolling his eyes. If Jane hadn't had Bingley introduced to her as Darcy's brother, then she would have known it watching him now.

“And get the glass from the lights, too!” Darcy calls after her brother, then looks back at Jane, missing the obscene hand gesture that Bingley makes at her behind her back.

Definitely siblings.

Darcy is looking at Jane now, with a touch of concern that suggests Jane's face is making one of her involuntary helpless/exasperated expressions that are usually Darcy's fault again. Jane feels the need to say something to prove that she hasn't fallen completely in shock.

“Dragons watch Star Trek,” Jane finds herself saying, due to lacking pretty much any substantial thoughts in her head so that it's pretty much of loop of nonsense. Her brain is beginning to come back online again, but it's a slow process without caffeine.

“Yes,” Darcy confirms flatly.

“You're a dragon,” Jane then says, looking Darcy up and down, as though maybe she'll be able to observe evidence of draconian features now that she knows. But no, all that's visible here is Darcy's impressive cleavage and a pair of penguin-patterned pajama pants.

“Yes,” Darcy says again.

Jane tries to think of something intelligent and insightful to say, but falls flat. “That sort of explains the ridiculous amount of dragon-themed stuff you own,” she manages, because apparently she has been struck with a curse to speak the obvious. (Must be Darcy's fault.)

“Oh,” Darcy, the curse-casting dragon intern in question, replies, before smiling faintly, shrugging, and saying, “Well... dragons __are_ _ cool.”

Jane barely stops the laugh of hysteria threatening to burst out of her throat, because that is an unmistakably Darcy thing to say. It always has been. And this all makes so much sense and is far too believable, even without Thor's visit, and even if a part of Jane is still convinced that this is either a dream and at least one person in this room is crazy. (Jane hopes it isn't her, although the last bit of her life heavily indicates the possibility exists.)

“Dragons are cool,” Jane agrees, before giving into gravity and hiding her face back in her arms, away from reality-not-yet-understood.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate POV of YatPtmD Chapter 4: [Just Another Day in Beautiful Puente Antiguo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/8688487)
> 
> “I am the blood of the dragon." and "Fire cannot kill a dragon." are both lines (spoken and thought, respectively) of Daenerys Targaryen in George R.R. Martin's _A Game of Thrones_. 
> 
> "Vastly misunderstood beast." is a Harry Potter reference, spoken by Rubeus Hagrid in the Philosopher's Stone. I can't remember whether it's from the book or the movie (as a deleted scene) or both. 
> 
> I'm trying to work on Ch25 of YatPtmD, but it's not going great, probably because I'd much rather focus on the sudden abundance of ideas I'm having for Guardians of the Galaxy with dragons. I originally dismissed GotG before because Darcy being a dragon didn't really influence that movie, and then plot happened and more plot happened and now it kind of does. So... Guardians of the Galaxy with dragons might become a thing in the distant future, probably from Peter Quill's POV with five original characters (who aren't protagonists and won't be Guardians) thrown into the chase for the Power Stone. I already have an outline up to the beginnings of Knowhere written out, but will resist further for my own sake and the sake of YatPtmD.


	3. Ch13 - Maria Hill - Darcy's Arrival on the Helicarrier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Maria Hill considers surprise and how it does and does not influence her life.
> 
> Alternate POV of YatPtmD Chapter 13: [The Beginning of a Really Bad Joke](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/9133981)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have any particularly strong feelings for Maria Hill, but I like her well enough. We don't see much of who she is in the movies, beyond Fury's right hand, but it's fun to consider what's going on in her head.  
> Somehow this needed to have a bit of backstory, to establish the character and scene, which is what the first bit is.
> 
> Written between Ch24 and 25 of YatPtmD.  
> Posted 2015-09-19. 
> 
> Approx 3.1k words.

Some people said that Maria Hill was a robot... or at least an android of some kind. Apparently she held herself too stiffly, spoke too impersonally, and didn't emote enough to be a real human being.

 _Apparently_ tackling an international ambassador at a charity gala, thus taking the knife intended for said ambassador to the arm, then chasing the attempted assassin five blocks in an evening dress, and _then_ taking them out with a clutch purse and the knife they'd grazed you with, made you a human machine these days. Who knew?

Part of it was probably that Phil had the same skills and coolness, and Fury was mysterious enough that it wasn't hard to believe that his right and left workaholic hands were actually robots (or clones, as was common in Phil's case). One was an anomaly, but two was apparently a confirmed pattern.

Maria had heard these rumors too many times to count anymore. Not that anyone had actually said them _to_ her, since everyone was convinced she was an android (or the T-1000 Terminator from Terminator 2 for some reason), but she had her eyes and ears around just like the Director did. Hell, she _was_ a lot of his eyes and ears, since the man had to delegate _some_ things, so she'd heard employees warning each other that Maria Hill didn't need to sleep because she ran on battery and didn't have facial expressions because they'd forgotten to program them in.

Although Deputy Directors had better things than to confront stupid workplace rumors (the same ones that said Barton was a direct descendant of Robin Hood and that Romanoff got her code-name because she's killed every man who ever looked at her wrong (which was very possibly true according to Barton, which pretty much guaranteed it to be bullshit)), Maria had composed a response just in case she ever got to go off on one of these morons who got unnerved by her poker face.

First point was going to be a rant on how much shit Deputy Directors had to actually do – Maria would do some extremely questionable things if she could actually run on batteries instead of sleep – because with having to coordinate so many missions and emergencies and threats against civilization and humanity, Maria didn't get much sleep. Sometimes she'd still be at work at four in the morning and find the Director asleep in a chair; she kept a pillow in her desk drawer next to her extra handgun and had actually managed to master napping while standing. She ran on coffee fumes and the constantly-impending end of the world, and really just could not afford to allot any precious energy to something as unnecessary as facial expressions.

Second point was also going to be a rant, but this time on how much shit Maria had seen as a Deputy Director. She was Fury's right hand for a reason: she had seen shit that would make some of the rumor-mongering techs faint onto their keyboards. Sure, she _could_ panic about the terrorist organization claiming they'd created an arc-reactor or super-soldier serum of their own, but it was a little hard to muster up anything beyond: _'Didn't we do this last month? I feel like we did this last month.'_

Third point was that she was the Deputy Director of SHIELD, she wasn't allowed to panic even if she felt like it, because panicking was time that was better spent getting shit done. There was always shit to do, if she got emotional or personal about everything, then she'd never get anything done. Plus, being cool, confident, and seeming in control kept the SHIELD agents and employees calm and on task – fake it forever was a motto that Maria followed as fervently as the Director did.

One time, she was briefing the Director and Phil on General Ross' political movements over Chinese Take-out (because it'd been hours since their last meal and sometimes you just need to stuff your face with sweet-and-sour pork after some maniac's built a natural-disaster-causing machine) in the Director's office, and a (rather new) employee had burst in with news of some serial-killer turning out to be a mutant or something. Said employee had been so surprised at seeing SHIELD higher-ups eating food like real human beings that they'd tripped over their own feet and given themselves a concussion, then convinced themselves afterwards that they must have hallucinated the entire affair.

As Maria had put it to Phil over drinks a few weeks later, she's slightly concerned that there might be a fatal accident if she actually revealed her (somewhat pathetic) personal life or facial expressions. (“I guess it's one way to truthfully say that I have a 'killer smile' though.”) Phil had almost fallen out of his chair from laughing so hard.

The point to all this is: while Maria could have shown some surprise when dragons suddenly became part of the picture, but mostly she just wanted to find her desk, pull her pillow from the drawer, and take a fucking nap like she'd been wanting to before dragons suddenly became part of the picture.

When they pulled Maria from the car under the rubble of a collapsed tunnel, and Director Fury was pulled out of the surprisingly-together wreckage of a fallen helicopter, and the Director had told her what had happened... she didn't even know how to react. After a self-activating Tesseract had blown up the facility, another Asgardian had showed up spouting speeches about taking over the world, Barton and Selvig had been magically compromised, and Maria had just been in a shoot-out car chase and was bleeding from the head, she'd been pretty much out of... reactions.

She'd believed the Director immediately, because Fury was Fury and she'd had little reason not to after all that. Why even be surprised anymore? It made more sense to start barking out orders, get patched up while barking out orders, stop by a convenience store on the way to the helicarrier while barking out orders on the phone, stuff three chocolate bars in her face while still shouting orders into her phone, stare out the window and regret her job and loving her job as much as she did (damn, she had problems), yell some more, and slip her last chocolate bar into the Director's coat because he seemed a little shaken.

Most people wouldn't have been able to tell, but Maria could, and, though she hadn't actually seen it happen, that chocolate bar had vanished pretty damn fast.

When Yoko called with her suspicion that Jane Foster's intern and Jane Foster's intern's brother were dragons, Maria still couldn't be bothered to look surprised. Next thing they knew, Happy Hogan was going to turn out to be a secret unicorn and Betty Ross an elf changeling (since the woman couldn't possibly actually be related to General Ross), and Maria still wouldn't be surprised.

She was too busy being passed the fuck out against a desk, trying to catch a few minutes of sleep after SHIELD had gone Level Seven, with a never-ending list of updates and briefings on a tablet as her pillow. Most of them entirely on Darcy and Bingley (the names a joke of some kind, Maria is sure) Lewis as SHIELD desperately scrabbled for answers on the new mythical/mutant/monstrous/etc unknown of the month and didn't find much.

When Natasha called in with the news that there was a dragon sitting on Loki, Maria had only had to repress the urge to burst into laughter. Because she was tired as all hell and that was a serious contender for the most hilarious thing she'd ever heard or seen (once the video footage popped up). But it had been pretty easy to repress, since she was too busy sighing in non-surprise at all the evidence that that massive blue beast was very definitely Jane Foster's intern.

It had her phone, for crying out loud.

At the Director's nod of approval, Maria had picked up her own phone and dialed Darcy Lewis' number while Phil placated German officials and convinced them to hold back on calling in drastic force. The ensuing scene, both on the helicarrier and there in the square, wouldn't have been out of place in a comedy routine. Every single head on the bridge had stopped working to watch Maria Hill (suspected android) have a conversation with a dragon that was using Captain America (an old acquaintance apparently) to hold up the phone.

It was, without question, the most ludicrous phone conversation that Maria had ever had – a fairly impressive feat, honestly. The creature's voice had suited it, although the way of speaking had much more matched... not a mythical beast of legend. Maria was certain that the only reason she'd been able to keep a straight face during that conversation was that she hadn't actually known what to feel or how to react about what she was doing.

At least Maria hadn't had to have the conversation face-to-face. That was... something. The same way that Maria was now able to add 'successfully negotiated with a dragon' to her resumé was... something.

But there wasn't really time to freak out about anything, given the whole Level Seven situation, so Maria had hung up on the call and gotten back to work. They still had Barton and Selvig to find, along with their activities to track and intentions to devise, Foster to get on the helicarrier, as well as the press and public to deal with, on top of the regular operations that still have to get done if they want a world worth saving. The world, contrary to popular belief, didn't go on turning on its own. 

Maria had been catching some desperate hours of sleep when Natasha had called in to report the return of Thor, a three-way superhero grudge-match, an argument between Lewis and Loki that had ended with her smacking him off a mountain, Thor reluctantly getting in the Quinjet to hear things out after a phone call from Natasha to Phil, and Lewis still following the Quinjet having somehow lost her communicator. So... Maria hadn't really had much reaction to the incident beyond mashing her face into her bunk after she scrolled through the situation updates on her tablet and then getting up to finish organizing things for the arrival of the strangest collection of people in history.

Life would be so much easier if she actually was an android, Maria thought sometimes.

 

“This is Hill, go ahead,” Maria says, a hand to her ear and the other holding a report at arm-length to see if it made more sense from a distance. It didn't, which was why she was standing on the helicarrier deck waiting for the technicians to stop conferring and actually explain to her what was wrong with the circuitry running one of the engines.

“ _Maria, you've got incoming,”_ Natasha's voice replies in her usual bemused cool, the faint sounds of other voices speaking loudly in the background.

Maria stiffens with tension, mind running through the possibilities. She can never tell by Romanoff's voice what's happening, because the woman has the worst sense of humor, but Natasha would have said something more serious if the incoming was hostile or unexpected.

“...Lewis?” Maria guesses, turning away from the techies and mentally preparing herself to look up.

Natasha gives a small huff. _“Someone's a little impatient,”_ is all she says.

Maria looks up.

And for all the shit she's seen and all the shit she has to do, she very nearly falls on her ass.

There's a very big difference between hearing about something or seeing it on a screen and seeing the thing for yourself in real life. Art is like that, or so Maria's been told because she doesn't want to spend her precious time off staring at a wall. And then there's another massive difference between seeing it in real life and looking up to see its massive form swooping down towards you at breakneck speed.

Captain Rogers and Stark had looked tiny next to Lewis, but Maria still takes in a sharp breath along with the bulging muscles and massive bulk, and realizes that Lewis could probably have sat on the _Hulk._ At first glance, Maria would guess that Lewis was a hundred feet long from nose to tail, and it would be hard not to feel tiny and terrified as a hundred feet of scales and fire-breath slammed into the helicarrier deck with massive wings stretched wide enough to block out the sun.

Maria didn't manage it, but she kept her face as still as she could for her own sake.

Goddamn Natasha.

The entire helicarrier actually shook under the turbulence of Lewis' landing, and it was pure stubbornness that kept Maria sturdy on her feet. The techies behind her weren't nearly so lucky, one stumbled over at the trembling and another's legs gave out from trembling. Maria thought for a moment that she even heard a whimper, which was a sentiment that she inwardly had to agree with.

Lewis hit the deck already in a terrifyingly fast walk that was difficult to describe; you wouldn't have thought that something could stomp and slither at the same time, but Lewis managed it. Her enormous tail whipped back and forth through the air with her stride, lashing with deadly-looking spines that went all the way up to the back of her head, and her massive limbs came down with heavy steps and black claws that scratched into the airstrip with ease.

Lewis didn't pay any mind to the agents and employees gaping and gawking as she passed, nor to the ones who froze or flailed as she advanced towards them. She ignored them completely and let them stare at her folding wings and vibrant scales, which were smooth and shining save for the huge and jagged gashes across her chest. Something had, very recently, sliced into the beast's belly again and again and again, but gotten no further than inner layers of scales upon scales that were lighter and paler than the outer ones.

Maria remembers fondly when Darcy Lewis had been classified as a non-threat. If the world doesn't end soon, then this is definitely going to go down as the most hilariously massive mistake their analysts have ever made. Thank goodness for Yoko Mitobe being a suspicious old grump.

Taking a subtle deep breath, Maria puts a hand to her ear. “Sir, Lewis has landed.”

“ _I noticed, Hill,”_ the Director says dryly.

“She appears to be headed for the rear,” Maria continues calmly, as faking it will eventually calm her racing heart. She ignores the techies and other employees around her, instead keeping a cool gaze on Lewis as the massive creature snarls angrily at the doors for some reason. “And intent on something.”

“ _Foster,”_ is the Director's immediate answer.

Maria is already moving as Lewis decides the best thing to do is climb over the roof towards where the laboratory is, which really doesn't look like it can support all that weight, but neither does it look like all that weight could possibly fly, so it's really up in the air right now. Literally and metaphorically.

“Sir, Doctor Foster is with Doctor Banner at the moment,” Hill reports, walking quickly past two fervently gossiping engineers, through the doors and taking the turn that'll lead to the laboratory. “This could potentially cause a Code Green.”

“ _Then at least we'll know not to throw the man a surprise birthday party, Hill,”_ the Director replies flippantly, in the way that makes Maria regret giving him that chocolate bar that she really could have used about now.

There's a click then, and Phil's casual tones come into her ear. _“I'm attempting to contact Doctors Banner and Foster right now,”_ he says, in that blandly friendly, absolutely godsend way of his that stops Maria's blood pressure from going through the roof like Lewis might be trying to do. _“No response.”_

Maria trained herself out of swearing under her breath a long time ago, but if she did things like that still, she'd be doing it now. If anyone had told her when she'd signed onto SHIELD what her life would become, she wouldn't have blinked (because that was beneath her) but she definitely wouldn't have believed them.

“ _Foster and Banner have seen Lewis,”_ Phil reports. _“Foster has recognized Lewis on sight; Banner appears surprised but contained.”_

“ _How close are you to the lab, Hill?”_ the Director demands.

“Fifteen seconds, sir.”

“ _Foster's on her way out. Get Banner and bring him up to speed, then to the bridge.”_

“Yes, sir,” Maria replies, turning down a hallway just in time to see Jane Foster come running out a door. Maria turns to the side to let the shorter woman sprint past her, going fast enough to have bowled Maria over if they'd collided probably.

“S'cuse me! Thank you!” Foster says as she goes.

“Welcome,” Maria answers, already moving towards the laboratory and finally managing to get her heartbeat down to a decent rate. Bruce Banner is one of the last people on the planet Maria wants to be panicked in front of, even if they've only met once and he hasn't heard her reputation.

She is the Deputy Director of SHIELD, goddamnit, and she will not lose her cool even if her job basically now consists of gods, dragons, superheroes, and the end of the goddamn world. Her face will be smooth, her posture composed, and her voice steady no matter what because panicking is for people who don't have shit to get done and at least half of SHIELD to hold together.

Maria walks into the laboratory thinking a mantra of: _'Robots and androids. Robots and androids.'_

“Doctor Banner,” she greets blandly, “if you'd come with me?”

The man in question looks up from where he'd been leaning on the counter and attempting to establish a calm and regular breathing pattern. He's slightly pale, but mostly he looks exasperated, like he should have expected this and is kicking himself for actually being surprised.

Even if she's not showing it, Maria gets that feeling.

“Was that a _dragon_?” Banner asks, sounding disbelieving of the very words coming out of his mouth.

She gets that too.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate POV of YatPtmD Chapter 13: [The Beginning of a Really Bad Joke](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/9133981)


	4. Ch20 - Steve Rogers - A Warm Light For All Mankind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve Rogers stands in the middle of everything and everyone, completely and achingly alone. 
> 
> Alternate POV of YatPtmD Chapter 20: [A Warm Light For All Mankind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/10095011)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve is so damn tricky. Consider this canon to YatPtmD at your leisure or ignore it entirely like I might.  
>  _Sighs._ I don't know... this ended up just being sad. Beware of angst. 
> 
> Partly written months ago, mostly written between Ch27 and Ch28 of YatPmD.  
> Posted 2016-01-15. 
> 
> Approx 7.8k words.

 

“This sounds like it might be a bad time, but please, don't stop on my account.”

It's not, Steve will admit, his best interrupting statement coming into a room, but it's not his worst either. It's by far the most uncomfortable one he's made, though, because he'd said it on a familiar instinct that was ruined the second he remembered that he was seventy years out of time, a world out of place, and that no one, much less a friend, stood at his back.

But for just a moment, listening in on a conversation about madmen, dangerous and mystic cubes being used for mysterious gain, and secretive organizations with unknown agendas and acronyms that spelt out words, he'd forgotten. SHIELD's helicarrier was the most familiar place he'd been so far in this new world, and the collection of people gathered upon it echoed people now long dead in ways he couldn't describe. So he'd just... forgotten.

He remembers now, though, from the emptiness at his back if not the sudden tenseness of the room as its occupants stare warily at him. Dr. Banner and Dr. Foster look at him like an intruder, which is true enough. Ms. Lewis is busy observing the others and their reactions equally as much as she is him – that knowing look taps at bells in his head, just short of ringing; he's seen it before, he's sure. And Anthony “Tony” Stark stares at him (but not at _him_ ) at first with startled surprise and then with cool blankness.

Stark – no, not Stark, _Tony_ ; Stark reminds him too much of Howard – breaks eye contact first, and Steve feels like he's lost a battle he didn't know had to be fought. Howard's son, who's _older_ than Steve is (the ice doesn't count; it can't), has a stiffness to his shoulders that Steve doesn't know how he earned the same way he doesn't know how he earned the idolization that makes him feel sick to his stomach when he sees it.

(He can handle coldness, though, and skepticism, but the worship... when he sees those shining eyes, all he can see is a haze of confetti and the flash of cameras. He'd rather have people to prove wrong than ( _false, so fucking fake_ ) legends to live up to.)

“...And here I thought those golden olden days were the epitome of manners,” Tony says, breaking the empty silence, going back to his work and not even bothering to look at Steve now. “Didn't anyone ever teach you that it's rude to enter a room without knocking, Mister Rogers?”

Steve remembers laughing at the long-forgotten propriety of the 19 th  century, and the stuffed old folks who complained about how the today's youth had been ruined by the wars and were flaunting all the rules. Steve remembers his mother's endless sighs and being clucked at by Ms. Bennet's needle club and the endless commentary of polite society having gone to the dogs with the war. Steve remembers how Bonnie greeted Bucky with a “How the fuck are ya, handsome?” and how Connie had ignored him the whole date, unwilling to play pretend just because her girlfriend had wanted to have a night out with a dance partner who could lift her over his head.

“They might have,” Steve replies as evenly as he can manage, folding his arms over his chest out of discomfort rather than an attempt at intimidation or an indication of being unimpressed, although his intentions are apparently lost on Sta- Tony.

Steve remembers kicking open the doors to a HYDRA base, gun in hand, with the Howling Commandos opening fire at his side. Steve remembers getting information and confirmation on a HYDRA mole and Colonel Phillips hitting the man over the head without any warning, so that they could rip the cyanide capsule out of his mouth. Steve remembers turning a doorknob and sliding into a room on silent feet, keeping quiet so not to set off any alarms before he opened HYDRA's front gates, and reaching out with silent hands for the unknowing guard in front of him and...

“But I also got taught that it gives people time to reach for their guns,” Steve continues, trying his utmost not to let the fact that Tony Stark still isn't looking at him bother him, and prompting, “You think SHIELD is hiding something.”

Tony makes a snorting sound, hands moving in a way that sends echoes through Steve's head again. Echoes that Steve ignores, again, as he has since Tony Stark walked onto the helicarrier bridge and all the news clips and briefings in the world couldn't stop Steve from feeling like he was seeing a ghost.

“Have you _met_ Fury?” Tony demands, still without looking Steve's way. “He's a spy, Cap; he's _the_ spy. His secrets have secrets their other secrets don't know about – of course he's hiding something.”

The showy hand gestures, the sense of drama to his speech... god, it's uncanny. But it's also so different, and Steve can't help but make the comparison. Howard was a showman and a flirt and somehow both experienced and wide-eyed; Tony's voice and expressions have touches of cynicism and sarcasm far beyond his father, having that added edge of experience and depth that Steve never heard or saw on Howard. Probably because the son has about a decade and a half on the father.

Howard is- was _young_ compared to Tony, so unbelievably _young –_ which is a thought Steve still can't properly wrap his head around. Howard had only been a year or so older than Steve, comfortably in his mid-twenties and cracking jokes about having plenty of time to have some fun, and now here's his friend's grown son in his early-forties.

“Everything about this Tesseract mess has been suspicious from the beginning,” Tony continues, nodding towards Dr. Banner without looking away from his work. “Bruce, you've been here the longest. It's been bugging you too, hasn't it?”

Steve tears his thoughts from the past and his eyes from the future he still can't really believe, looking towards Dr. Banner, someone blessedly unfamiliar and comfortingly uncertain. It makes Steve feel guilty to be grateful that there's someone here less comfortable in their own skin than him, especially given Banner's reasons, but he can't help it. The same way he now can't help but be grateful that Dr. Erskine's serum didn't turn him green the same way he's grateful it didn't turn him red.

(What did he do to deserve his luck anyway?)

Dr. Banner grimaces and twirls his pen in his hands, shoulders curved in slightly under the attention. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see the intense focus of Dr. Foster and the narrowed-eye stare of Ms. Lewis on the man at that movement. (Steve knows he's seen that look before, it echoes too much for it to only be his imagination; he just can't place where.)

“It has. Doctor Foster-”

“Jane.”

“Jane,” Banner immediately amends, “has just said that all the data points towards SHIELD trying to get energy from the cube -”

Steve remembers the burn of HYDRA weapon gunfire, the way that the blasts seemed to tear men apart and scatter their pieces into the air in seconds like they'd never been there. Steve remembers the ungodly glow of the weapons and the unmistakably _human_ look on Howard's face after he'd come back from his labs where one of his assistants had been vaporized, ripped to shreds like he'd never existed, for getting a touch too close to a broken gun. Steve remembers the scream of agony as the Red Skull had grabbed the cube – the way the air had ripped open and the cube had gone brilliant and HYDRA's leader had been scattered across unfamiliar stars set in space more vibrant that Steve ever could have imagined.

It looks like 'leaving well-enough alone' is a tactic that still hasn't caught on when it came to dangerous and mystic cubes. The SSR had been desperate for HYDRA weapons and their source – there's something that hasn't changed at least, though he wishes that it had.

“- Professor Selvig's experiments definitely prove it – but for what?” Banner continues, pausing before continuing his point, confidently spoken despite his awkward phrasing. “I'd... I'd even say that Loki made a jab about it to Fury earlier. Um... 'True power; unlimited power' – and then he mocked Fury for having some sort of ambition for that power – for the cube.”

( _“And what a dream it was, wasn't it?”_ _)_

“'A warm light for all mankind to share',” Steve answers in recall, thinking of the mad look across Loki's face not dissimilar to the Red Skull's disdainful jeer. He doesn't remember ever dreaming of peace, only for the war to stop; it's the madmen who preach the idea of perfect harmony and order in his experience. “I heard.”

Dr. Banner nods. “Exactly. So if SHIELD's been using the Tesseract just for energy purposes – altruistic purposes – why wouldn't Fury bring in the man who's been making all the breakthroughs in self-sustaining energy? It doesn't add up,” he points out, gesturing towards Tony and adding thoughtfully, “I think part of that jab was meant for you too, by the way.”

The arc-reactors, of course. Before he'd recently been offered the briefings, Steve had read the papers poorly attempting to explain the accomplished miracle of renewable energy, soon to be implemented in the new Stark Tower in New York City. He'd even been to see the building, although he hadn't managed to catch sight of the infamous Iron Man, and thought to himself that Howard deserved to be here and see what his son had done and be as proud as proud could be.

“Mmm, you're making me blush,” Tony answers, grinning warmly at Banner before looking back at Steve with an expression that could best be termed 'distant'. (Steve refuses to let it cut at him.) “I'm kind of the _only_ name in clean energy right now. Which -” Tony looks towards Ms. Lewis, smile friendly again (and oh god, the echoes). “-is what the guy who works in clean energy is going trying to cut in. First rule of business is to know your competition.”

Howard's first rule of business had been to mix it with pleasure as often as possible, at least, according to himself when he'd treated the Howling Commandos to a night out and gotten spectacularly drunk to the point where he'd been named an honorary member.

Ms. Lewis – Darcy, the dragon in human form – puts up her hands in a gesture of surrender, the barest amused twitch to her lips that suggests she's humoring Tony. Which only makes sense. Steve is certain that she's been humoring them all since she landed on Loki in Germany – at least, when she's not taking a strategic retreat of some kind or another or suddenly angry to a unnervingly alien degree. Ms. Lewis seems to put up a number of fronts.

( _ **“It's been awhile though. I looked... different then.”**_ )

Tony turns towards Dr. Foster now. “Jane the dragon-tamer, come show me this Tesseract data of SHIELD's,” he says, all magnanimous. “I bet I can follow it back to the sensitive stuff Fury has under a parental control block. We'll be able to figure out what SHIELD's been doing with the cube a lot faster if my decryption program knows exactly which of his secure files have the goodies.”

“ _Decryption_ program?” Dr. Foster echoes with wary curiosity. “What __decryption_ _ program?”

Steve's missing nearly seventy years of technology, but it's not as hard to make the leaps as everyone might think, especially given the way Lewis and Banner's eyes flicker briefly towards Steve while Tony's pointedly don't.

Foster gets to her feet, having to step around Lewis to give over the device in her hand. That's one thing that seems to be certain about Lewis, she's always between Foster and the rest of the room or directly behind Foster. Standing guard, obviously familiar and casual to a degree that Steve suspects that it's an unconscious setup for both women... well, woman and dragon.

Dragons, monsters, robots, alien gods and army... the future is a strange place. Steve's half waiting for this SHIELD set to drop away too. More than half. Almost hoping, to be honest about it.

Foster puts the device on a counter, leaving it for Tony to snatch up as she peers curiously at the glass screen he'd been doing incomprehensible things on. Steve thinks he sees Tony performs something that looks like a sleight of hand, but can't tell the difference between the device before and after. Tony puts the device back down, a light blinking rapidly, and returns to Foster.

“JARVIS has been running since I hit the bridge,” Tony informs her with obvious pride.

Steve frowns slightly at that, recalling that the name sounds familiar, especially when attached to the Starks, but only that. The way Tony says it, this Jarvis sounds like a person, but the use of running implies something else to Steve and they were talking about decryption programs and secure files. But... that's probably a problem for another time, especially with the next thing that Tony says.

“In a few short hours, we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide from us,” Tony announces to them all, finally looking at Steve, and it's everything that Steve didn't know he didn't want. There's suspicion and defiance and obvious disdain, although if it's directed at the outfit Steve's been given, Steve can't exactly blame the man.

“Do we have a problem here... _Cap_ tain?” Tony asks.

Well, yes. Steve has lots of problems here, just like how he has lots of problems everywhere. He's in a future that might as well be another planet entirely and everyone he gave a damn about or who gave a damn about a skinny kid from Brooklyn has lived their life without him – some to the end. He's helping an organization made in his name, which fights enemies on levels that he wasn't made for, and it's so convoluted and complicated that he can't tell when SHIELD's giving him a genuine reason or a well-crafted excuse anymore. Steve has a problem: he is very, very lost without a hope of going home.

He looks back at Tony Stark, who reminds him of a dead man and who might as well be the twenty-first century's Captain America – hell, what Steve would give to have a suit that wasn't constantly under his skin. Tony is undeniably rude, shamelessly brash, and Steve wants to throttle him for having that completely unnecessary fight with Thor – they should all be grateful that Lewis kept Loki from running off on them during that mess. Tony Stark, at first and ninth glance, is hardly someone Steve would trust with the secure files of a worldwide intelligence agency.

But the man's kept his Iron Man armor and technology away from the government – one that seems hungrier for war than Steve's ever was and it's terrifying – and that's a point in his favor even if it was done out of selfishness. Steve is fairly certain that it's not wholly selfishness, because there are more layers to Starks than that, and that means that Tony can keep a secret and do what's right against what he's ordered to do.

Steve looks towards Jane Foster then, ignoring the way this seems to startle the room, and considers her part of this. To be honest, Foster also reminds him of Howard, but while with Tony it's mostly the cynicism and showmanship, with Foster it's the consumed curiosity and determination. He's not sure about Foster's ability to keep a secret, but if SHIELD is secretly meddling with HYDRA's favorite weapon of mass destruction like she and Tony suspect...

Well, Steve thinks with his eyes flickering briefly towards Banner, SHIELD's history of handling those isn't all that impressive sometimes, even if they apparently had to fight a governmental jurisdiction battle for the Hulk.

“You're absolutely certain that SHIELD's been trying to power human-made machines with the cube?” Steve asks her, unintentionally intense enough to make himself wince at his heavy-handedness.

Foster looks back at him evenly, jutting out her chin and standing a little taller. She's short, so it objectively doesn't do much, but for a moment, Steve is in front of a glass window in Brooklyn, back in the body that kept trying to kill him and ready to tell the whole world to fuck off for looking down on him in more ways than one. With that kind of echo, that kind of what the Howling Commandos would call 'stupid', Foster doesn't need Lewis sliding to her feet in support, not with Steve.

“Absolutely,” Foster tells him, like she's daring him to disagree.

Steve doesn't, and nods to show his acceptance before he looks back at Tony to explain himself. He needs to be careful about this, because this is delicate and Tony is obviously prickly, so he does his best to reinforce the stupid recklessness and probable necessity of what they're doing. And gee, don't those two things describe the last little bit of Steve's life perfectly.

“Those files are secure for a reason,” he says, ignoring the thought that it might be a very bad reason, gesturing towards the incomprehensible screen. “But as long as you can guarantee their security, then I'd rather know what the cube's been used for than not.”

Just in case.

Banner and Foster's eyes are wide with surprise and Tony is actually gaping, but Lewis looks unsurprised and even slightly smug, like she expected this. She looks positively gleeful at Tony's opening and closing mouth, while Banner and Foster just look concerned.

“That was not what I was expecting you'd say,” Tony mumbles finally, tucking one hand under the other arm's elbow and that arm's hand on his chin. He stares at Steve, looking up and down the eye-searing, embarrassing red, white, and blue outfit, possibly metaphorically looking past it this time.

Steve raises an eyebrow and waits.

“You don't trust SHIELD,” Tony concludes finally, like he's discovered something impossible.

Well... Steve is pretty impossible, on several counts.

“SHIELD probably doesn't trust SHIELD,” Steve answers, unfolding and refolding his arms, wondering how to establish himself here. It's not something he's had to do since he woke up, and this is more like trying to re-establish himself. “I don't know who you think I am, Mister Stark -” Tony. “- but I'd appreciate it if you stopped confusing me with them. Loki's trying to wind us all up; you don't need to help him.”

Lewis winces then, enormously, and then Steve's brain catches up with his mouth. That felt like a necessary statement when saying it, but... was it? Foster looks pained and is unsubtly moving back towards Lewis and Banner, the latter of whom looks only moderately surprised and answers Tony's disbelieving look with a 'what the hell do you expect me to do about this crap'.

Then Tony straightens his shoulders and starts to circle Steve, wide and slow, switching direction when he's run out of space and paying Steve an uncomfortable amount of attention. If there's one thing that Steve hates next to bullies and pure fucking evil, it's being studied like a lab-rat. It takes an enormous amount of strength for Steve snap out something horrible at the man.

“So-! What _has_ SHIELD done to lose the trust of the guy who carries around their namesake? Was it the spangly outfit? It was, wasn't it?”

Steve does _not_ grit his teeth. “Losing it implies they had it in the first place,” he replies, trying to match Tony's casual sharpness and probably failing.

His allegiances can't be _assumed._

Tony steps into Steve's space then, with a completely fake grin that falls far short of empathetic and right into the kind of smile that gets teeth punched out. “Well said!” Tony says, and Steve can hear the unspoken but that prefaces the next statement. “You're a living legend, Cap, it's hard to imagine that SHIELD hasn't been on their _very bestest_ behavior for you since they pulled you out of the ice.”

Steve feels himself go cold and he has to batter back the unwanted memories of endless white and frozen metal and barely surviving only to choke on ice and blood. He doesn't need the reminder, not with his dreams doing the job - hazy nightmares of a terrible place between life and death, bright white and cold dark, and ice constantly seeping in and in and in, forever and further, in a sleep that wasn't sleep.

“You'd be surprised,” someone answers, and Steve hears his own voice from a distance.

He's spent his time awake in a glorified SHIELD set more than the real world, uncertain whether or not he could really leave, be left alone, and try to live again. Or if he even wanted to - if he _wants_ to - or something like that, anyway.

“Ice?” Lewis whispers curiously, to Foster who has rejoined her.

Foster doesn't respond, or maybe Steve just doesn't hear her over the howl and bite of the blizzards that never stopped. He feels frozen to the spot here, glaring at Tony, who seems in this moment to be all the worst parts of Howard made even worse, with all the painful cold and aching loneliness and selfish injustice that he's been carrying around for longer than he knows. All he can think of is being so, so angry, taking that ship and following that fall, saving the world and giving up, and wondering why being dead was so cold and hoping that it wasn't like that for _him_ too.

In this moment, Steve is so angry that he's gone entirely cold.

It could also be the other way around, but he doesn't care right now.

A small hand impacts Steve's chest and he's surprised and brittle enough to take a step back, blinking down at Jane Foster's determined and unimpressed expression. The echoes she sends are just enough for Steve to beat back the nightmares and force himself to return to reality, where it's not warm but it at least isn't cold, which counts for far too much to him.

“What was that about _not letting_ Loki wind people up?” Foster demands of them both.

“ _Nice,_ ” Lewis murmurs, although hell knows why.

Steve represses a shudder and looks at Tony, who's cautiously looking back at him. Steve has no idea why he reacted that way, since he's never had anything like that during his waking hours before. He feels himself deflate, almost sore with the tension released from his shoulders, and sees Tony do the same.

Foster steps back with an approving nod, moving to stand by Banner and Lewis again. Banner looks somewhat impressed while Lewis looks ready to clap her friend on the back in congratulations, but suddenly Lewis' entire expression and posture changes as she obviously catches sight of something that makes her hateful and defensive. The look in her eyes is nothing less than animalistic as she glares at Loki's scepter across the room for no reason discernible to anyone else.

And then there is an inhuman growl rising from her chest, deeper than anything Steve has ever heard before, deep enough to make bone tremble. It rises in volume steadily, full of snarls and hisses that no human tongue should be able to make. It's a terrible sound and an intimidating display, and Steve is forcefully reminded that the small woman in front of him is a front for something much larger, much scalier, and with many, many more teeth.

He remembers the massive blue beast on top of the mountain, smacking a demigod away with no effort at all, powerful tail sweeping around her as her wings flared. She had passed it off as a joke, but Steve recalls the sheer fury on that inhuman face and how incredibly enormous she was, especially looking down at all of them from far above. Loki laughed, but all Steve could do was stare and feel even further out of his depth against things so monstrous.

Even Foster looks nervous now, though she sidles closer while Banner backs away. Then, without any warning to anyone, the small woman jabs Lewis in the ribs – hard – and all Steve can do to that is send a belated apology to poor Sarah Rogers.

Instead of reacting with more growls or sharp claws, Lewis immediately snaps out of it. “Ow, Jane. _What?”_ she hisses, smacking her friend's hand away with far less force than she's probably capable of, even in this human shape.

Then Lewis looks up at the rest of the room, taking them in with obvious confusion.

“You were, um, snarling,” Foster informs her. “Very, uh, loudly. And it didn't sound very... human.”

“Oh,” Lewis says, like she's genuinely realizing this. “Uh... sorry?” she apologizes with an uncertain shrug, then she shakes her head and looks confused again. “Wait, what?”

Foster stares at Lewis like the dragon-woman is incomprehensible and Steve understands that.

“You just started growling all of a sudden,” Foster explains, not slowly, but carefully, and Steve decides that this is something that is definitely best left to Jane the dragon-tamer. “And glaring at the scepter.” Both women glance towards it briefly, before Foster steps closer to Lewis. “Is – is something wrong?”

Steve hates it that Lewis looks considering about it.

“It's nothing,” Lewis answers, probably out of habit because she immediately backtracks. “Just... it's just that everybody might want to, um, check their anger?”

Steve tries to decipher that and can't, and is relieved to see that he isn't the only one who looks confused. Tony stares blankly at the dragon-woman, while Foster's expression is a painfully attempting to inform her friend that context is needed, and Dr. Banner especially looks confused and wary – probably tense, Steve would guess, from both monsters in the room right now.

Lewis sighs and gestures vaguely towards Loki's scepter. “That thing is... doing something, I think,” she says with a shrug, letting out a frustrated exhale. “I don't know how to contain it or do something about it without blowing out all the tech in this room -”

Tony makes a humorous choking noise.

“- so just... check your anger? If you started feeling agitated, ask yourself why?” Lewis suggests, shrugging again and slipping her fingers through Foster's at her side, which Foster immediately takes without hesitating and possibly with relief while Lewis surveys them all. “And... okay, look,” Lewis says flatly, “can we just not have this extremely manly posturing thing, please?”

Steve blinks at her. What?

“ _Please,_ ” Foster echoes immediately, and Steve could swear he sees Banner nod with her.

“Yeah, it's, like, really captivating to watch,” Lewis continues while Steve's brain scrambles to make sure that he's really hearing this, “but if Loki's trying to wind people up, then that's not the kind of conversations that should be being had.” She stares at him then, him and Tony, with a vaguely disdainful expression and says, “Whatever you guys have to work out, this is a lot bigger than that.”

She gets lost in thought for a moment, but then turns her stare on the scepter and says steadily, “I promise you... that SHIELD is messing with something that is a whole other level of dangerous.” She looks around at all them, obviously forcing a kinder expression on her face. “I know that I said that I didn't know what the Tesseract was until very recently -”

Steve takes note of her use of 'I know I said'.

“- and I'm not sure what could even be made from it, b-”

“Weapons.”

The entire room looks at him and it's then that Steve realizes he spoke.

“The cube – the Tesseract – can be used to make weapons,” he informs them, deciding that if these are the people who are tasked with retrieving it, then they need to know what that thing is capable of. He doesn't care if SHIELD thinks otherwise, especially if they've been playing with it. “The last thing anyone was making out of the Tesseract was weapons. Using that cube to power anything...”

Steve recalls the HYDRA weapons again, ripping soldiers and civilians to shreds.

“...it didn't go well the last time,” he finishes. “And it doesn't look to be going well this time either.”

“I suppose you would be a pretty good judge of that,” Tony mutters under his breath, and Steve can't tell whether he was meant to hear that or not. The serum screws up his gauge of normal, so he can't tell sometimes, but thankfully he doesn't have to respond to that statement, as Tony quickly gets lost in his own thoughts.

Steve realizes that they've gotten far off-track, at least from the reason he came here in the first place, and since escape from uncomfortable echoes and the upsetting scepter sounds good, he quickly moves to wrap things up. He's overstayed any welcome he had and he needs his own space to consider everything he's learned, about SHIELD especially in this future world.

“Doctor Foster and Miss Lewis are right,” he continues, nodding in their direction, “this isn't a time for arguing about things needlessly.” He represses a shiver from imaginary cold and looks at Tony. “I don't distrust SHIELD... exactly, but I definitely don't trust anything from that cube not to be destructive.” Too much evidence otherwise. “I've been shot at with energy from that thing enough times. If there's... anything I can do to help...”

Tony snorts disbelievingly and Steve prepares himself for more prodding, but the man seems to be in far better humor all of a sudden. “Sorry, Cap,” Tony says, grinning and gesturing around at all the advanced future technology in the room. “But I think you might be a few years out of date in this area of investigation.”

Steve's always been a fast learner, but he doubts that he can become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics in a night or use a computer to break into the secure files of an elite secret agency, so he doesn't take offense. This stuff they always left to Howard and his division of the SSR, so it's... interesting... that Steve's found himself face to face in a similar place with Tony.

“Just a few,” he agrees amiably, thinking of good memories, before he reminds himself that now is neither the time nor the place (and these are not the people) for reminiscing. “Secure files are still secure files though, Mister Stark, and usually for good reason. They shouldn't be handled... impulsively.”

“There's an insult towards me in there somewhere, I can sense it,” Tony says accusingly, although it lacks all earlier bite.

“Maybe,” Steve agrees, possibly just to see the surprise on Tony's face.

“Doctors Banner and Foster,” he acknowledges in farewell, because Sarah Rogers still raised a polite boy even if that Brooklyn kid had to make way for a good soldier.

It's as he turns towards Lewis, that he pauses. Director Fury sent him to speak with her, but Steve still doesn't know what to make of her. She's even more alien than the aliens, with a score of secrets behind a human front, and apparently she knows him from before he died.

Lewis looks back at him evenly.

“Miss Lewis,” he manages finally. “A word?”

 

~

 

Lewis agrees easily, completely relaxed as she follows him. Steve will admit that it's actually a bit unnerving to have someone treat him like this, because it's not exactly common. Director Fury is respectful but challenging, Hill is just watchful, and Coulson is... awed. Romanov is teasing but suspicious, Tony is complex to say the least, Banner is distantly friendly but nervous, Foster is fascinated but absorbed in other things, and Thor is respectful but ultimately dismissive in favor of being concerned about his brother.

Lewis looks at him like she knows him, like she knows something he doesn't, but she's still curious about him somehow. And she's either eerily silent and calculating or ridiculously casual even with any passive or submissive fronts she puts up, like she knows that she could take on everybody on the helicarrier and win. Although he likes her well enough for now, Steve can't help but think that the person that Lewis most reminds him of is Loki.

Only still vastly different. And probably on their side.

“Okaaay. So... what's this about?” Lewis says once they're stopped.

Steve decides to just come clean about it, because he doesn't know how not to and doesn't want to, and he's pretty sure that any past acquaintance won't actually save him if Lewis gets angry, no matter what SHIELD obviously thinks.

“Thor and Agent Romanoff are collaborating with Director Fury to extract information from Loki,” he answers, which clearly surprises the dragon-woman. “I've been tasked with inquiring if you had any information on Loki to contribute.”

“Not that Thor wouldn't already know or I haven't already told him,” Lewis replies immediately, tilting her head and momentarily losing herself in thought. Steve's noticed that she does that frequently, far less than she actually shares her thoughts, at least.

Though it's really important that they learn Loki's plans, a part of Steve is grateful that Lewis hasn't volunteered any information and he has little inclination to try to make her. What's happening now is clearly SHIELD going behind Thor's back and Steve doesn't want to make that man angry, not when he's got a punch like a speeding truck and can summon up lightning. Plus, interrogation is something that Steve can probably pull in a pinch, but it's not his strong suit and he's not entirely comfortable with it for a number of complicated reasons.

“How'd you come to be the one tasked with asking me?” Lewis asks him curiously, folding her arms and looking him up and down before peering inquisitively up. “I mean, if they wanted a consult, they could have just messaged the labs or something, I'm sure.”

Steve can see the challenging glint in her eyes and would bet anything that she knows exactly what SHIELD was asking for besides information. Lewis' alliances lie with Thor before SHIELD and with her answer, everyone will know it for certain. Steve has no desire to be the ambassador between parties at all.

He sighs. “I asked that,” he tells her. “Agent Romanoff said it was because the regular agents are afraid you'll eat them and that, as a fellow dinosaur, I might be able to properly communicate.

Lewis' smile at that is enormous and it surprises Steve slightly at how human her teeth are.

“She _what?_ ” Lewis says gleefully.

“It's an age joke... I think,” Steve answers, sighing again as he mentally relives every single one of the terrible jokes Romanoff's been throwing at him since he met her. Even the Howling Commandos might have to throw in the towel at some of her puns. “She keeps making them.”

“Oh my god, that's amazing.”

It kind of is, and Steve smiles at Lewis' obvious delight, before recalling the second question he came to ask her. This second one isn't from SHIELD and he doesn't really think she'll answer it, but it's been needling at him for awhile now and he figures it's worth a shot.

“Our 'previous acquaintance' may have also been mentioned,” he says, “which...”

“You're still in the dark on,” Lewis finishes for him, biting the inside of her cheek and looking thoughtful. She seems to be considering what to say and Steve does his best not to be hopeful about anything, because he's met a lot of people and she could know him only in passing.

Lewis finally comes to a decision and sticks out her hand. “Okay, proper introduction time. My name is Darcy Lewis, intern to Dr. Jane Foster, scientist-wrangler extraordinaire, also secretly a giant blue dragon,” she says plainly and Steve bemusedly shakes her hand, before it sounds ridiculous said straight like that.

“A while back,” Lewis continues, “I coincidentally used to be Darcy Bennet of Brooklyn and your next-door neighbor.”

Steve freezes in the middle of the handshake, staring because holy shit.

“It's nice to see you this turn of the century,” Lewis says politely, “although I'm confused as to how since it doesn't seem like you got here the long way.” Then she just stands there and waits for him to catch up, lips twitching slightly at him, which is understandable if he looks half as stunned as he feels right now.

_Holy shit._

Darcy Bennet is a name that Steve hasn't heard since exchanging stories with the Howling Commandos over the war. She came up once or twice, in one anecdote about strange neighbors that they'd had and in another about how Bucky swore he once saw her bound up the stairs, three at a time, carrying two full bags of groceries, with Steve heckling Bucky the entire time during the latter. Besides that, he's heard no mention of her.

People aren't supposed to get younger over time, but Lewis isn't exactly bound by human rules, and now that she's pointed it out, Steve can actually see Darcy Bennet in Darcy Lewis. She's got the same nose and mouth and eyes – same face entirely, actually, only without the wrinkles and spots. Her mannerisms are slightly different and the deep brown hair is jarring, but the mischievous look in those familiar gray eyes and the barely repressed smile hasn't changed a bit.

Steve can believe she's the same person, he doesn't understand why a dragon would pretend to be an old woman and choose to live in a shit apartment in Brooklyn.

Oh shit, her _apartment._ Suddenly all those dragon-themed lamps, tables, vases, windchimes, and umbrellas make a horrifying amount of sense. Steve had originally thought that Ms. Bennet just had a thing for antiques and that it was a miracle she'd never been robbed, but...

“That... explains your apartment,” he finally says, for lack of anything else to saw.

Lewis-Bennet throws up her hands. “Why does everybody keep _saying_ that?” she demands with exasperation that Steve had not unexpected. “It's not that weird to own dragon stuff! Dragons are cool! I bet lots of people own bunches of dragon stuff! Eccentric old ladies can have collections of dragon stuff without being dragons!”

Steve just blinks at her and raises his eyebrows.

Lewis-Bennet deflates. “Okay, it does sort of explain my apartment,” she admits, looking up to meet his eyes, “but my previous statements still stand. I'm – I'm a lot older than I look. I've lived a lot of human lives, mostly incomplete – I think Darcy Bennet was actually the longest, honestly.”

She makes a considering hmph sound, like she's casually contemplating living through whole lifespans, before she turns a dramatically accusing look on him. “And wow,” she says. “Let me tell you, it surprised the _heck_ out of me when I found out you ran off to war and became Captain America, Star-Spangled Man with a Plan.”

Steve would give a lot to have that part of history lost forever. “It's the sort of thing you expect your neighbors to do as much as you expect them to be dragons,” he replies, with his most serious voice and solemn face, although he doesn't feel particularly serious.

This dragon-woman and all the unknowns behind her are hardly comforting, but it makes something in his chest swell to have found a connection between his real life and this future world. When Lewis-Bennet's eyes narrow suspiciously at him, just like a canny old woman, Steve can't help but break out into a grin at that thought.

“You are a brat,” Lewis-Bennet announces with a sniff, her voice suddenly an elderly croak that Steve recognizes all too well. He always thought that she intentionally played up her age to mess with people and this proves it.

Oh shit, Bucky was actually right about the stairs thing.

“No respect for your elders,” Lewis-Bennet continues, sounding so offended that Steve wants to burst out laughing at how ridiculous that voice sounds coming from someone who looks younger than he does. Then he remembers Lewis-Bennet is actually a dragon and wants to cry with laughter when she continues, “These young people today, no manners either.”

Two can try that game, since Steve is apparently ninety-something now. He lowers his voice and gives his best mimicry of Colonel Phillips at his grouchiest. “Back in my day, we treated our elders right,” he declares, and it's not a great impression but Lewis-Bennet's realizing smile is huge. “Said our 'please's and our 'thank you's, and we were grateful. Dunno what for, but we were _grateful._ ”

Lewis-Bennet bursts into laughter, which sounds very much like her older self's cackle. She laughs so hard that she has to lean against the wall to keep from falling over and Steve can feel himself preening with pleasure. He hasn't been able to joke around with anyone for... since before the ice, he thinks. He hasn't been in a place to try this sort of teasing and joking with strangers.

“Oh my _god,_ ” Lewis-Bennet chokes out.

“I can never say anything like that in front of Agent Romanoff,” Steve realizes suddenly, else he'll be forever doomed her jokes because she'll probably just give him crap if he tries to call her out – judging by her interactions with the director and deputy-director, at least. “Or Mister Stark,” he adds, because Tony seems to be under the impression that Steve doesn't know what humor is.

“ _Never_ in front of Stark,” Lewis-Bennet agrees, actually wiping a tear away from her eye and grinning widely at him. “Oh, it's great to see you again, Steve, even if it's been a while. How the hell are you still alive? I thought you died just before the war ended.”

Steve can't help it, his smile falters, because now that he thinks about it, she's not exactly wrong. And the reminder of his time under ice doesn't help his mood either. It almost pains him to see Lewis-Bennet wince and her grin drop away too, leaving her looking guilty, because shit, he just ruined a good moment.

“...I thought I was going to,” Steve admits quietly, taking a deep breath and trying not to think about how it all could have been averted rather easily if he'd just told Peggy his coordinates.

She and Howard could have come fished him out, if he'd been less willing to die.

“There was an enemy plane filled with bombs, headed for America and no way to stop it but to crash it into the arctic,” he explains. “I went down with the plane, didn't expect to get back up... but the enhancement that did this -” He gestures over himself, the part of him that isn't really his. “- kept me in something that SHIELD's doctors are calling 'suspended animation' while I was frozen in the ice. It was... a bit like sleeping... almost.”

A painful, restless, icy unconsciousness.

“But I woke up a couple months ago,” he continues, shrugging to play off a time he's mostly convinced was made up by his nightmares, “they tell me the war's long over and that we won.” He subconsciously clenches his jaw for a moment. “They didn't see fit to mention what we lost.”

The world that Steve woke up in isn't the world that he fought to save.

Lewis-Bennet's shoulders drop slightly and she looks up at him, tilting her head again. “Times... times tend to change quite a bit over the ages,” she tells him softly, sadly, like she remembering dozens of half-lived lives in a few seconds, “more often without you than not.”

Steve doesn't want to live a life like that. He doesn't want to be grouped in with a mythological creature who's probably seen generation after generation die, watching it all go by. He's painfully reminded of how Captain America has already gone into stories and legends and wonders – if Lewis-Bennet is as old as the Asgardians are – how many myths she's made over the centuries.

Steve doesn't want to live a life like that.

Lewis-Bennet brings her eyes back to his again, her expression deeply sorry for him, like so many others have in some poor attempt to be respectful of him having his world taken away. But somehow it's worse coming from this dragon-woman, because it's terribly, horrifyingly understanding.

“...What did you lose, Steve?”

It's said kindly, but that doesn't stop it from feeling like it's ripping him apart. This is not the place to break down and sob, of lost friends and love love and lost everything, and it's not the time to do this either. He doesn't know what he was thinking, trying to chase down an echo when the world is on the line.

“Nothing that can be found again,” he answers, knowing in every bit of him that this is the truth. There is nothing and no one that he has lost that can be returned. “We've... we've lost track of the conversation,” he says, looking away and moving away as she reaches out to touch his arm.

“Steve...” she says.

No, he can't do this. He can't be both Captain America and Steve Rogers right now, because Captain America has a job to do and Steve Rogers wants to either fling himself off something or break into pieces. He can't be Steve Rogers for Darcy Bennet right now – it hurts too much and he can't be that selfish when the world's at stake.

“I'll inform Director Fury that Thor has any and all pertinent intelligence,” he tells her, knowing that it comes out wooden – stiff and dry. Then he looks down at her face and felts himself soften, because he can hardly leave without a goodbye, as Sarah Rogers raised a polite boy in the end, even if that kid had to make way for a soldier. “I'll see ya around, Ms. Bennet. You're looking good for a woman your age, ya heartbreaker, you.”

Then he steps back, gives her a brief nod, and walks away before she can unintentionally break his heart any further with gentle questions about what Steve Rogers lost being Captain America.

Besides... she was there, so she knows exactly who he lost.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate POV of YatPtmD Chapter 20: [A Warm Light For All Mankind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/10095011)


	5. Ch26 - MH, CB, SR - Avenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This was never going to work... if they didn't have something... to..._
> 
>  
> 
> Alternate POV between Chapter 25: [Divided We Fall](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/11816810) and Chapter 26: [Deepest Reaches](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3874786/chapters/13171753)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this is not new material. This originally used to be chapter 26/27 of YatPtmD, and I'm moving it here because I've decided to do that. It always felt a little out of place and was extremely self-indulgent, so... moving it. Keeping it in the 'verse, but moving it. 
> 
> Spoilers for Ch25/26 of YatPmD: Divided We Fall. Originally written as Chapter 26 of YatPtmD: Avenge.  
> Switched from YatPtmD to here as of 2016-03-20. 
> 
> Approx 6.2k words.

 

The entire scene was caught by a singular camera, which offered only a singular, distant, and soundless view of the conflict that had taken place on the helicarrier deck. Five blurred figures moved about, presumably speaking, and it was too far away to even see their faces, though it was more than clear who each individual was.

Maria Hill watches the people at the table watch the video, unobtrusive and apparently hard at work off to the side as per her usual. There's so much that has to be coordinated immediately – their flying fortress is hanging in the air only by the skin of their teeth right now; their remaining people are scattered and scared; Loki gutted SHIELD with a smile and vanished into thin air; and they have to somehow recover right now because the world is probably going to be invaded and ended soon – but Maria can't help but pause her reading of Phil's reports and take a moment to watch.

Director Fury is standing at the head of the table, leaning heavily on a chair, watching the only other three people in the all-but-emptied bridge intensely. Half of it's probably posing, but Maria recognizes the tired tension in the man's shoulders that belies injury or exhaustion or both. He didn't think anything like this would happen – not this big; not this disastrous – but even caught off-guard, Nick Fury won't let himself fall over until this is over however much he wants to.

Seated around, Rogers, Stark, and Natasha watch in absolute silence. They don't look much like superheroes here – too grim, too still, and too carefully ignoring how many empty chairs there are and how much they, these remaining few, are still not the team they were supposed to be.

These three probably feel it worse than any of the others would, Maria supposes, given that they knew the expectations Fury had (and _still_ has, Maria knows) for them and align the most closely with the ideals of Fury's Initiative. The Hulk was a gamble, Thor was only a possible ally, the dragons came out of nowhere with their own agenda, and other heroes and metahumans were marked as possibilities... but these three were the shortlist... the backbone... the guaranteed members.

Steve Rogers, Captain America, is watching the video on the tabletop straight on, eyes fixed and jaw set and fists clenched, a cut over one cheek and small burns over his neck. His infamous shield is on the chair to his right, having been kept within reach since he got his hands on it after securing the failing engine. It's hard to notice against the paint, but there's a small smattering of blood on it that Maria would guess was from the enemy soldier that had been about to throw a grenade into the bridge and didn't quite get the chance.

Usually living legends don't manage to live up to the legend, but Steve Rogers manages just fine. And what better candidate for a team of superheroes than the original superhero? Who wouldn't pick _the_ Captain America? SHIELD was made in his memory by his friends and comrades, he's unknowingly been a very vital part of it for decades, and most people expect that the legendarily heroic Steve Rogers wouldn't hesitate to do any duty SHIELD asks of him.

It's Director Fury's unspoken opinion, Maria knows, that Rogers would agree because he didn't have anything else. SHIELD needs Captain America right now, the world needs a good soldier, and Fury's well aware that the adrift Rogers will respond to the familiarity and responsibility.

Tony Stark, Iron Man, is watching the video out of the corner of one eye, cold pack pressed to his head, sprawled in his seat and mostly turned away, like he's trying to somehow pretend that he's not paying attention. He has a painful-looking bruise forming over his non-visible eye and more over the rest of him, as well as a wince that looks like the beginnings of a bad headache – consequences of getting smacked around by the engine he'd saved, unpleasant even in his infamous suit.

Though he's kept away, Tony Stark has been a part of SHIELD ever since he was born; the Starks are right up there with the Carters and the Moritas in SHIELD's history. The founding director even once showed Maria adorable pictures of a pre-school Tony running rampant through SHIELD's halls on the regular occasions that Howard brought him along to visit.

Maria's favorite is the one where Dr. Hank Pym is falling out of his chair because little Stark jumped out shouting “BOO!” from under his desk, with Dr. Van Dyne and Director Carter nearly killing themselves from laughter in the background.

Stark is on good terms with the founding director, on a first name basis with most of SHIELD's top scientific minds, and would probably have gotten involved with SHIELD a lot sooner if not for his falling-out with his father, his parents' deaths, and his Stane-encouraged downward spiral of irresponsibility. Stark has a lot that he's trying to do better, to fix – to atone for, Director Fury says – and it didn't take much of a prod from Director Fury for Stark to be willing to try and prove himself someone who could do some good for the legacy he's ignored.

And next to Captain America, Iron Man is the most famous superhero in the world. Tony Stark is a prime symbol of the best and brightest that the world has to offer – he's inspired a lot of people and pissed a lot more off – and he's a genuine genius. Eccentric and obnoxious occasionally, but still a genius, and definitely the person you want on your team when your helicarrier starts falling out of the sky.

Maria's heard Fury grumbling more than once about the kind of trouble there'd be if they tried to make the Initiative happen _without_ Iron Man, and while she's pretty sure that it's a joke, there's an inarguable point to that.

Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, is sitting on the edge of her seat with the appearance of being more relaxed than she is. She's watching the screen with a blank face, and Maria can tell that Natasha's unsettled about having lost Jane Foster to enemy soldiers, although Maria's not certain how Natasha thinks she could have somehow done better. She has a shoulder injury (lab explosion) and a knife wound (Barton), she took out two soldiers and retrieved Barton from Loki's control, and yet she's probably beating herself up because she thinks she should be feeling bad about prioritizing Barton over Foster and doesn't.

Natasha doesn't have the celebrity that Rogers and Stark do, nor the super-strength or super-suit of Captain America or Iron Man, but she's been on the Initiative from the beginning. The Black Widow is well known in their community; she's SHIELD's best agent, only rivaled by a handful of elite, and the most adaptable and capable person that Maria's ever met. Her training and intelligence combined with her physical enhancements put her on a dangerous level, and while she could never match someone like Thor or the Hulk or the dragons, sometimes plain destructive power isn't what's needed. She's exactly the sort of person needed to round out a team of heroes and whip them into shape.

She doesn't fail often, and always pulls through _some_ success in the end like she's got something important to prove that she won't admit to, so Maria willing to bet that Natasha is... unhappy that Loki, mad and obvious as he was, was able to tear everything apart. Natasha's been off since Barton was compromised and she knows it; and there's nothing Nat hates more than losing her handle on a situation, the thing that she usually prides herself on.

Maria's seen the video that they're watching three times now. After it was first brought to her, she had to watch it again just to make sure that she hadn't been imagining things, and then she watched it with Director Fury when she brought it to him.

Lewis runs out onto the deck, scaled and limping, and confronts the Loki mirage. Unknown conversation occurs in which Loki holds Lewis back solely by the knife to Foster's throat, ending in the soldiers drawing Foster to the edge of the helicarrier while Lewis and the false Loki follow. More conversation occurs, Loki performs some kind of magic which ends in him disappearing, Lewis turns around to watch the real Loki walk onto the deck with bloody scepter in hand and another soldier in tow. By the hand movements, Loki is talking as he approaches.

Then, mid-gesture, Loki swings up the scepter and shoots blue energy towards Lewis, which explodes halfway between them for unknown reasons. There's a struggle between Foster and her captors, Foster goes over the side, and Lewis is distracted at just the wrong moment by this to get blasted off the edge mid-transformation. She accidentally manages to take both of Foster's captors with her as she goes – unconscious, shifting, and smoking.

Loki, standing with the scepter outstretched and glowing, waits for a long moment. As nothing seems to happen, he warily lowers his weapon and turns to the remaining soldier. The pair walk to the waiting jet and...

Director Fury pauses the video.

Maria narrows her eyes.

The silence in the room stretches for a few more seconds, straining as though to cover up the empty spaces at the table, before Fury sighs. With the room's rapt attention, no matter what Stark is trying to pretend he's looking at, the director takes a deep breath.

“We're dead in the air up here. Our communications are down and we have next to nothing to go on. Banner -”

Maria recalls the video of Lewis, shape unstable and blue scaled, getting smashed through a wall by the Hulk. The fight in the hanger had been a mess, and they'd lost visual on the Hulk after their pilot had interfered and the Hulk had gone down with one of their jets.

“- Thor -”

The video of Loki breaking out of the cage is mostly missing. It goes from footage of Thor and Loki before the attack on the helicarrier to a black screen as the camera suddenly failed. The only thing they have after that is patchwork footage of Loki during the attack, a missing cage, and no sign of Thor.

“- the location of the cube, the Lewises... I got nothing for you.”

The director never has nothing – _ever_ – but Maria keeps her mouth shut and her fingers moving in work because she knows not to interrupt when the boss is up to something. They don't have much, certainly, but they definitely don't have nothing, not if Fury's doing whatever he's doing now.

He pauses a moment.

“Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract to contain and combat threats that our current technology was incapable of handling. Yes, we were meddling in something that we didn't understand, trying to turn out an easy and quick solution to a scary realization: ... we are not alone... and we are outmatched.

“I never had all my chips on that number, though... because I was playing with an older, much riskier idea. We've made a point of recruiting extraordinary individuals from the beginning, capable of and determined to do incredible, impossible things. We've had a few of them, over the years.

“The Avengers Initiative was to take this a step further and bring together a _group_ of remarkable people – to see if they could become something more, and work together to fight the battles that we never could. The idea's never managed to get off the ground, it's been brought up and sidelined again and again; not the right people, first, then... not the right time.”

Fury looks around the table, meeting the eyes of every person there. “Heroes are considered an old-fashioned notion nowadays...” He looks down at the paused video for a pointed moment. “...about as fairy tale and fantasy as gods and dragons walking the Earth. ... According to the people in charge, it makes more sense just to build big guns.”

He lets silence fall then – doesn't say another word – and waits patiently for a reaction from the three people he has gathered around the table. When he doesn't get one, he carefully pulls his weight off the chair he's leaning on, and walks over to Maria. He doesn't say anything, but Maria immediately begins quietly filling him in on the reports on their personnel, the engines' status, and the damage that Barton seemed to have wreaked on their systems before Natasha took him down.

Clint Barton is an extraordinary agent, incredibly personable and seemingly unambitious, and apparently exceedingly dangerous working for an enemy agent. If Loki hadn't been on the helicarrier, Maria is certain that Barton could have rather simply brought them down entirely before they'd had any time to counter. He'd laughed when they'd first presented him with the opportunity to be on the Avengers Initiative, which was probably one of the reasons that he'd been considered with serious deliberation despite his exemplary mission record and skill; he'd probably only agreed to follow Natasha, else he likely would have been perfectly happy remaining a regular, very elite SHIELD agent.

After another minute, Stark gets up and, without looking at anyone, walks out of the bridge without saying anything. Rogers and Natasha watch him go, then after another moment, Rogers seems to come to a decision, gets to his feet, grabs his shield, and walks off after the other man.

Natasha exhales, pulls herself to her feet, and gives Fury and Maria a _look._ She doesn't say anything; she just looks at them for a drawn-out few seconds before she seems to see something and exhales again in her version of a sigh. Natasha stretches her arms, shakes them out, and walks off the bridge in a different direction to the other two.

Back towards Barton's bedside, probably.

After all of them are gone, Maria turns her own look on the director, which he ignores as he hands her back her tablet and moves over to the table again. The paused video of Loki disposing of Foster and Lewis is still on the tabletop as Fury drops down into one of the chairs with a weary thump, staring at the frozen frame with his usual undecipherable expression.

Maria doesn't even make it half a minute before she just can't handle not bringing it up.

“Sir, if you had let that video play for five more seconds...”

Fury just sighs and leans back in his seat. “They needed the push.”

 

~

 

_It would be so easy, you know._

“Clint.”

_Oh, yes, you know how easy it would be just to take it back. You didn't need free will, anyway, you know that now. Isn't it painful? Doesn't it hurt? Wasn't it just so much nicer when you didn't care to question? Just stepped aside and let someone else take the reins?_

“Clint, you're going to be alright.”

_No, you're not. Not even close._

How can he be alright when there are _things_ moving in the shadows at the corner of his eyes? He's never going to be alright until the soundless whispers stop and his intrusive thoughts don't sound so much like the demigod who took his ability to think away. He's never going to be alright until the lights stop swirling blue when he's not staring directly at them; he's never going to be alright when his chest is so unprotected... so open... so easy for another touch of blade to... to...

A cool, wet cloth slaps down on his forehead – not enough to hurt, just enough to snap the shadows away – and it feels almost unbearably good. Clint wants to reach out at the comfort, in thanks maybe, or maybe to make it chase the whispers away too, but his arms are held down to the cot he's on, which is a comfort in itself. Awkwardly gentle and ever sensible, that's his girl.

“'Tasha...” he groans weakly. “Why didn't...?”

_So easy to push you back out... so, so easy... and you know, you know, you know it._

“Why didn't you tell me... how much it... to be unmade?”

How much it _sucks._ To have someone reach into your brain and play and to not even notice – or notice but not even care. Nothing but bliss in obedience, bliss in order, bliss in not knowing and not caring and thinking but not really. Unmade and remade. To be pulled out of your own head and have something else put in except that something else is somehow still you. But how can it be you when everything you would have said what important in identity was gone? It shouldn't have been you but it _was_ and it _wasn't_ and it was horrible and it was fine and it _sucked so much._

Clint has never been someone to question identity before; he's always been him, even when he's fucked up and hateful and can't get out of bed, he's never been anyone but him. Even when his skin seems to hate him and even when he doesn't really want to be, he's still him. Identity wasn't something that could be lost for him; he never quite got how 'Tasha couldn't find her own identity in her.

“There aren't really words for it,” 'Tasha answers simply, deft hands moving alongside her words in front of his face. It's hard to focus on her blurring and swirling fingers, since the shadows keep trying to interfere, but he perseveres and the familiarity makes the world smooth out some.

She's right, as pretty much always.

“Why am I back? How did... how did you get him out?” Clint demands, because if it would be so easy for... he's right there and it would be so... Clint needs to know how to get him out and keep him out and completely stop the quieting whispers he can't stop hearing.

Hearing too much is not a problem that Clint expected to have.

“Cognitive recalibration,” 'Tasha answers, slowly moving through the hand signs so Clint can follow them without his head aching too much. “I hit you really hard in the head.”

That explains a lot.

Clint pushes his head back into the pillow with a another groan. “'Have you tried turning it off and on again?' Really, 'Tasha?”

“It works.”

“...Thanks. Wait, 'Tasha, what are you _doing?”_

“Unfastening the restraints,” 'Tasha says and signs, as though this should really be obvious.

Which it is but Clint can't quite understand why she's doing it, and uses his freed hand to stop 'Tasha from unfastening the second. It's a clumsy and desperate motion, and his grip on her hands is sloppy and pathetic, and 'Tasha gives him one of those looks that he undoubtedly deserves but...

“What if...?”

Out of the corner of his eyes, the lights are no longer swirling blue and the shadows aren't moving anymore. Even the whispers have muted down to almost nothing at all now, sure to fade away entirely soon; it no longer feels like there's someone at the backdoor to his mind but what if they still have the key and slip back in? Clint's mind doesn't feel safe anymore and he can't change the locks and what if...? What if...?

'Tasha removes his hand from her own and unfastens the second restraint. “Then I'll hit you really hard in the head again,” she informs him once it's done with. “It's going to take time to beat this, but we don't have that long.”

Of course they don't. The helicarrier, SHIELD's pride and joy and whatever, is flying wreck and Clint... did that... Holy shit, he nearly brought down the whole helicarrier and Fury is going to kill him. How the fuck; he shouldn't have been able to manage that. How did no one stop him?

Oh. Oh god.

Clint takes 'Tasha's hand again. “'Tasha, how many agents?” he asks (demands), staring her right in the eyes because he _needs_ to know and she has to understand this too. He didn't even think about it, just loosed arrows and stepped over bodies and took down everything in the way between him and Jane Foster and oh god.

“Don't,” 'Tasha orders, placing her free hand on top of his. “Don't do that to yourself, Clint.”

That's what they say about enemy agents – they're people, of course, but you can't think about it because you just can't. But these were SHIELD agents, good and loyal people that Clint passed in the cafeteria and chatted with as he dropped off reports and who showed him pictures of their kids in the elevator. They didn't deserve this and he needs to know because they deserve that because he... he...

_Oh god._

“Don't do that,” 'Tasha says, intense and steady as a rock. “This is a whole different level, Clint. This is Loki. This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for. You can't take it onto yourself.”

There's a slimy feeling that runs up Clint's spine at that name, like fingers tracing up his back up to his neck and _into his head._ For a brief moment, he can hear the whispers again, that smooth voice in his ear and a grasping hand in his heartstrings and blue light pushing all his thoughts away.

Clint sits up to escape the memories, putting his feet firmly on the floor. It helps... sort of.

“Loki, he... he got away?”

“Yeah. I don't suppose you know where?” 'Tasha asks, leaning back tiredly into her chair, and Clint catches the stiffness in her limbs that he didn't see before. Or maybe just didn't care.

“I didn't need to know,” he answers grimly, “and I didn't ask.” Didn't know and didn't care. Yeah, that sounds about right for bliss; it's just ignorance and apathy, really. “He's gonna make his play soon though. Selvig was supposed to have the Tesseract's device working and in position today.”

'Tasha straightens again. “We have to stop him.”

Clint squints at her, rubbing the bump she put on his forehead; it's a big one. “Yeah? Who's we?”

“Right now, it's us, Stark, and Rogers,” 'Tasha answers. “Maybe some others.”

“These others wouldn't happen to have... scales, would they?”

'Tasha looks at him, face placid, and he _knows_ she's holding down a smirk.

“I wasn't hallucinating those, right?” Clint asks, because what the fuck. He didn't care enough about anything to react before but... dragon. A _dragon._ When the fuck did dragons become a thing? And he thought Norse Mythology aliens was weird. “Dragons are a thing now?”

“Mmmm,” 'Tasha says, enjoying this way too much as she always does. “You were there for the Puente Antiguo Incident, weren't you?”

“Yeah...” And he distinctly remembers there not being a dragon.

“Remember Foster's intern?”

“Yeah...” It'd be kinda hard to forget the stacked spitfire that tore into Phil's team for taking her iPod, which had been hilarious, but... Clint has no idea where this is going and he doesn't like it.

“She's the blue one.”

“There's more than _one?”_

'Tasha's lips twitch into a small smile. “I'll fill you in on the way,” she says, standing, and he does _not_ like the cheeky tone of her fingers. “We need to gear up and grab Stark and Rogers from their male bonding or whatever they're doing. Loki's got a few things coming to him.”

“Well, I'd sleep better if I put an arrow in Loki's eye socket,” Clint agrees, pulling himself to his feet with only a bit of wobble, still slightly stuck on _dragons._ “'Tasha... are you sure about...?”

“When have I ever been afraid to hit you in the head when you need it?”

Clint snorts before he can help it, grabbing her hand again before she can step out the door, pulling her gently back into the room. “No, not about that; I trust you, 'Tasha. It's just... An Avenger, 'Tasha...”

Why does it have to be _them?_ Clint's not being arrogant when he says they're good, because they're some of the best, they've been trained to the peak and past it, but they're still human. Clint has more scars and aches than it seems possible some days, and 'Tasha, even with her enhancements and skill, isn't invincible. As she said, this is magic and monsters and nothing that they've ever been trained for; he's pretty sure they're out of their league here.

“Are you _sure?”_ he asks.

'Tasha is hard to understand. She's the strangest mix of finish-the-mission-at-all-costs and survive-and-live-to-live-another-day that he's ever met, sensibly practical and stupidly reckless at the same time. Most people wouldn't guess it – they only know her past, not the present she's figuring out for herself – but she's exactly the type of person to wade into a war.

He just wants to be sure that she's doing it for a damn good reason. It can't be just for his sake, or because Fury's asking it of her. Well... it can, but he hopes not. He doesn't need her to take on his atonement too, and he doesn't want her to either.

“I'm not a hero,” 'Tasha replies, quiet but firm, fingers trailing with certainty in time with her words. “I'm not sure I even believe in heroes... or Avengers... or whatever we're calling them now. But the world's not going to save itself, Clint; we may be facing monsters, but if we don't step up now... while we can still do something...”

'Tasha takes a deep breath, eyes fierce. “I've got red in my ledger," she says. "I'm going to wipe it out.”

Then she turns and walks out of the room, some movements a little stiff, but overall determined.

Hmm, that'll do.

Clint, ignoring the faint dizziness in his skull and the open vulnerability in his chest, follows her.

 

~

 

Steve finds Tony in the lab.

Well, what used to be the lab; it's wrecked now. Half the floor is missing and the other half is covered in glass and debris and singed papers. Most of the equipment is either hanging by wires, cracked in half, or no more than pieces that can't be salvaged.

Though that doesn't seem to be stopping Tony from trying. The man is bent over the remains of the screen that Steve remembers Dr. Banner looking at just before the explosion, examining it carefully. His hands move in a way that sends echoes through Steve's head (again); echoes that Steve ignores (as he has since Tony Stark walked onto the helicarrier bridge and the news clips and briefings in the world couldn't stop Steve from feeling like he was seeing a ghost). Tony doesn't stop his work or turn around, but his shoulders tense as Steve enters the ruined room, with purposeful sound in his footsteps this time.

It's not exactly knocking, but they started out on the wrong foot and Steve doesn't want to keep walking that way. There's too much history, none of it in common, between him and Tony Stark to do anything but tread very carefully. Though in this future, it seems like a miracle Steve has any kind of footing at all, really.

(Dragons, monsters, robots, gods, aliens... the future is a strange place. Steve's half waiting for this SHIELD set to drop away too. More than half. Almost hoping, honestly.)

“What are you doing?” Steve asks, careful to keep anything that sounds like accusation out of his voice. He might be lost and tired and sick of assumptions and lies, but there's no excuse to take that out on someone else, even unintentionally.

Stark – no, not Stark, _Tony;_ Stark reminds him too much of Howard – sighs and flicks a piece of broken screen. “Trying to recover the location of the Tesseract,” he answers, taking the offered olive branch without looking at Steve. “But it looks like someone managed to metaphorically melt SHIELD's systems and anything connected to it.” He flicks the screen again. “It might take a week to sort through this mess.”

“We don't have a week,” Steve says, thinking aloud. They don't have much time at all; any longer and they might as well wait for Loki to do something dramatic and destructive again.

“Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Steve frowns at that, but it _was_ obvious and... the edge of tension from before is gone, there's no more underlying anger or suspicion that only became more brittle with every deep breath. Steve just doesn't want to start anything, and that's it, simple and natural now. Steve doesn't doubt that the missing presence of Loki's weapon has something to do with that.

With a heavy sigh, Tony seems to give up on the broken parts in front of him, though he still doesn't turn around.

“How did... you and Lewis know each other?” he asks after a few moments.

Steve folds his arms and leans against a nearby counter, curious at the non-sequitur (but maybe not, given what they just saw). “She used to be my neighbor,” he answers, sorting through the slightly hazy pre-serum memories to find a rickety apartment and a wrinkly face. “Mine and Bucky's, back in Brooklyn, before the war. Only she was pretending to be around eighty back then.”

Tony turns around then, looking incredulous and then suspicious. “Eighty?”

“Eighty-year-old widow, Ms. Bennet; walked in a hunched shuffle and took _forever_ going up the stairs,” Steve confirms, unable to help the small grin that worms its way onto his face. “Bucky used to swear that he saw her bound up the stairs three at a time once, carrying two full bags of groceries.” He snorts at the memory. “Told him he was seeing things and asked him what he'd been drinking.”

“I want to accuse you of pulling my leg but Lewis seems exactly the type to do that,” Tony muses.

“Oh, absolutely,” Steve agrees, grin fading a little as he comes back to the present, where Darcy Bennet/Lewis and Jane Foster are probably (definitely) dead and Bingley Bennet/Lewis took the scepter and ran, only Loki has the scepter now and the second dragon hasn't been seen since.

There's silence between them for awhile then, empty but not uncomfortable.

“I'm sorry,” Tony offers finally.

Steve shrugs, but the motion is traitorously stiff. “We weren't... close.”

But she was the closest connection that he had to Steve Rogers, before the serum, before the war, before Captain America. It hurts to have found that: someone who knew him, and then to lose it about a day later. But still... they weren't close, and it only really puts him back where he was before.

“But... thank you,” Steve adds, because it's nice to hear that.

He still doesn't know what exactly to think of Tony Stark. Sometimes the man matches his files (reckless, abrasive, egotistical) so exactly that he couldn't do better (worse) if he were actively trying, and then Steve thinks that anyone who thinks Tony Stark can fit into a file has to be blind. There's an edge of experience and depth and intelligence to Tony that astounds him, and guarded but genuine compassion in his words that make them much more real than most everything else Steve has been offered since he woke up.

There's still a history between the two of them, one that Steve seems to have mostly missed out on, but that's alright. Steve would rather have people to prove wrong than false legends to live up to, and he thinks... he thinks Tony Stark would understand that and feel similarly.

“We need to find Loki,” Steve states firmly. “And we need to stop him.”

 _From killing anyone else,_ he doesn't say, but he's sure Tony hears it.

“...He didn't come after us,” Tony says.

“What?”

“He didn't come after us,” Tony repeats, staring into nothing as though trying to follow a trail of thought, hands half-raised in the middle of doing exactly that. “He had to get rid of Avengers because he knows he has to take us out to win, but he didn't touch you or me. He took out Thor personally, the Hulk indirectly, sent Barton after Romanoff, took out both of the Lewises and Foster also personally, but he left the both of us alone. Why?”

“He might think we're not enough of a threat,” Steve points out, unfolding his arms and standing so he's no longer leaning against the counter. “I think Barton and Romanoff was incidental. Everyone else wasn't exactly... human, more of a threat in his eyes.”

Tony considers this, then tips his head. “Could be, but what I think is that he wants to save us for later. We're still a threat, and he knows he has to take _us_ out to win too, but here's not the right place for some reason. He needs to beat us, but why not here? Why not now?”

“Either he's on a schedule or... it's more beneficial to take us out later,” Steve says, trying to follow this interesting train of thought. He thinks he can see where this might be leading, although following Stark thoughts often involves a fearsome amount of tangents.

“Exactly,” Tony says. “Loki's a diva, remember? He's a showman. What if he wants to beat us and be seen doing it? He wants to put on a show; he'll want to show the whole world that its hopeless to fight back, that's why he's picked a city somewhere; he wants an audience.”

Steve nods. “Right, I caught his act at Stuttgart.”

“And we beat him there, in front of the world; it was part of his plan, of course, but we still beat him and everyone saw it. Golden-horned nutcase beat up by Captain America and Iron Man - and Lewis, of course. He _let_ himself get caught, but now people think that he _can_ be caught and that's not a great thing when you're trying to take over the world.”

“So he wants to beat us with a audience to show that he can't be,” Steve says. It's just a theory and Loki's insane enough that making theories is almost a waste of time, but that makes sense. “And he's got the ego for something like that to matter to him. But, then why-”

“He got rid of Lewis,” Tony interrupts, “because Lewis was a threat that he couldn't handle. She's too big and she knows things that the rest of us measly mortals don't – she ruins his plans – so she has to go immediately. It's not perfect, but no one really knows who she is; she doesn't have the morale impact or the name recognition that he wants. Ah... sorry.”

Steve blinks at Tony's apologetic expression, then realizes that the man's apologizing for the callous analysis of Lewis' death, which did admittedly hurt. “It's fine,” Steve says, brushing it off. “We've got to put that aside and get this done.”

He's done it before. He can do it again.

Tony gives him a strange look, up and down, then continues his thinking, “Right, so Stuttgart was just a preview and he's got to finish it. He's moving on to opening night and it's got to be big – it's got to have a city for a stage and us as the guest stars – that's how he is. So the question is: which city?”

“We can put together a list,” Steve suggests, “of the things Loki needs to open his portal; that's bound to shorten the list of possible venues.”

“Right,” Tony nods decisively. “I'll need another look at Selv-” He stops.

“What?” Steve asks.

Tony doesn't answer, only reaches into his pocket and pulls out a phone and stares at it like he can't comprehend its existence. Steve understands that feeling, even though adapting hasn't been hard, but he has a feeling that that's not Tony Stark's problem.

“Security breach,” Tony says, looking up to stare at Steve. “At Stark Tower.”

Steve stares back, because no.

_... Really?_

Tony shuts his eyes. “I really hate this guy,” he says as the lab door slides open.

“Yeah? Get in line,” a new voice grouses.

Steve looks over his shoulder to see Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton standing in the doorway, looking a little worse for the wear but armed and ready to go. The most overt weapon is Barton's bow and arrow, but they've both got knives, guns, ammunition, and a few other things that aren't immediate identifiable or visible.

Steve's only got his shield; maybe he should invest in something else.

“Gentlemen, Clint Barton,” Romanoff introduces, nodding her head at Steve's silent inquiry: Barton's back on their side. “Clint, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.”

“Hey,” Barton says, deceptively relaxed against the door frame.

Romanoff doesn't wait for them to return the greeting. “You two got a location?” she asks.

“Stark Tower,” Tony answers, wincing slightly.

Barton makes a sympathetically pained expression and noise, while Romanoff just raises her eyebrows.

“Can you fly one of those jets?” Steve asks her.

“I can,” Barton answers.

“Then we're waiting on you two, boys,” Romanoff says, expression benign but smile sharp. “Time to suit up.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes from original YatPtmD Chapter: 
> 
> I'm still trying to work out various Avenger personalities, but I'm pretty happy with this. Steve and Tony are especially tricky to get a handle on, especially with the differences between them in the Avengers and them in their respective movies. It's a little annoying. 
> 
> But I did enjoy the scene between Clint and Natasha, though they were also tricky to write, especially Natasha. I wanted a Natasha who's more active and ready to be an Avenger, because I really think she would be. I was also working off the idea that Nat was partly inspired by Darcy, because when Bruce was going Hulk, Darcy could do something and _stepped up_ to do it.
> 
> My favorite part was changing Natasha's line from "I've been compromised. I got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out." to "I've got red in my ledger. I'm going to wipe it out.” It's just... I like that.

**Author's Note:**

> Current other scene suggestions include:
> 
> \- ~~Jane finding out about Darcy's dragonness~~
> 
> \- ~~Steve finding out how Darcy knows him~~
> 
> \- Someone worried for Darcy during the Hulk fight (specifically Steve)
> 
> \- Something from Bruce or Tony's POV
> 
> \- Something in Bingley's POV


End file.
